In a milestone step towards harmonization of Canada’s trademark regime with most other developed countries, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) announced yesterday that starting this fall, it will accept trademark applications filed with goods and services classified using the Nice Classification system.

According to CIPO’s announcement, there will be changes to its website to take advantage of the use of Nice Classification.  In particular, the Goods and Services Manual will be redesigned to facilitate classification of goods and services, and the search capability of the CIPO online database will be updated to allow for searching within specific classes.

Historically, Canada has not used the Nice Classification system when it comes to descriptions of goods and services.  However, as part of the aforementioned harmonization process, Canada will accede to the Nice Agreement.  As we previously reported, CIPO has already started the process of assigning Nice classes to terms in its database.

Happy Canada Day to all of our readers!