Earlier today, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office announced that long-anticipated amendments to Canada’s trademark laws will come into force on June 17, 2019.  It also published a new set of Trademarks Regulations, which will support those amendments.

First introduced in June of 2014, the amendments contain the most significant changes to Canada’s trademark law in decades, (discussed in earlier posts) including:

• Canada’s accession to the Madrid Protocol – meaning Canadian entities will be able to file applications in other Madrid Protocol countries through a single application and entities from other Madrid Protocol countries will be able to file applications in Canada using the same process;
• the elimination of filing bases and use of a mark as a prerequisite to Registration in Canada;
• the introduction of a requirement to group goods and services into Nice classes and a fee structure based on such classes;
• the introduction of a 10 year term of registration and renewal; and
• the introduction of new distinctiveness requirements for registration of marks.

Future posts will discuss the impact of these and other changes.

Neil Melliship and Jeffrey Vicq