Since the Canadian Government announced massive changes to the Canadian Trademarks Act (the “Act”) in 2014, practitioners and other stakeholders in the trademark space have been anxiously awaiting its implementation.

Unfortunately we are all going to have to wait a little longer.

It is now expected that the amendments to the Act which have been passed but not yet implemented will not be implemented until sometime in 2018. This pushes out the implementation date again, from an original (and optimistic) implementation date of late 2015, and a revised implementation date of  2017, to 2018.

The implementation of the remaining amendments is expected to coincide with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s implementation of the Madrid Protocol, the Nice Agreement and the Singapore Treaty.

We will provide further updates here on the timeline for implementation as more information becomes available.