Finally! At Long Last, Canada Makes Progress In Examination Of Trademark Applications

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has at very long last finally made progress in tackling the long-standing trademark examination backlog.  In a 2024 issue of our E-TIPS® Newsletter (see here for a previous report by the E-TIPS® Newsletter), we noted that there were reasons for optimism, and our optimism appears to have been justified.

The previously announced hiring of new examiners, and significantly, their apparent retention, has allowed CIPO to expand trademark examination capacity.

The backlog of Canadian trademark applications awaiting examination is now down to approximately 155,000.  CIPO hopes to reduce the backlog to 65,000 by the end of 2025.

While there are still a few dozen applications awaiting examination that were filed before June 17, 2019, when Canada adopted changes, including requiring classification of applications, almost all trademark applications now being examined are already grouped into Nice Classification, which allows for quicker examination. 

There are still about 2,000 applications filed before the onset of the pandemic lockdowns in March 2020 awaiting examination.  However, most applications filed in 2020-2022 which consist exclusively of a pre-approved list of goods and services (the so-called “picklist”) or were filed pursuant to the Madrid Convention have already been examined.  CIPO appears to have stabilized its examination of these latter two categories of applications, conducting first examination within about sixteen months of filing.  

First examination of the balance of applications (i.e. non-picklist and non-Madrid) is still over 4 years from filing.  Nonetheless, there is reason to expect that this backlog will continue to shrink.

Summary By: Gary Daniel