Trademarks in Canada

If you plan on selling your products in Canada, it is important that you should consider opening your own office in this country. You should also know that it is also important that you should register your trademark with Canada's Canadian Intellectual Property Office.

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office is the counterpart of The United States Patent and Trademark Office. Even if you already registered your trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office, you should also register it with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office because of the questions of jurisdiction.

To register your trademark in Canada, you should first know all about trademarks and why it is important. First of all, a trademark is used by companies as an identity to the marketplace. With a trademark, consumers will be able to determine which company manufactured the product. You have to consider that the success of your business will depend largely on the image your company shows to the public. You have to consider that because there are quite a lot of competitors in the market today, you have to make your products stand out and be noticed by consumers. To do this, your trademark should be unique and should be eye-catching in order to get the attention of the public.

Large companies protect their reputation by protecting their trademark symbol or logo. To do this, you need to register your trademark to make it illegal for other companies to copy your trademark. By registering your trademark, you will have exclusive rights for the usage of the trademark. You have to consider that your trademark logo symbolizes your product's reliability and quality.

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office is where you will register your trademark. To register your trademark in Canada, you need to know the basics in application for trademark registration with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office or CIPO. The Trademark Office in CIPO is responsible for receiving and examining applications for trademark registration and grand registration to qualified applicants, record trademarks, maintain electronic inventory of trademark registrations and pending trademarks for qualification, and they are also responsible for opening up these records for public use to search for trademarks.

The first step is to complete the trademark office branch requirements for trademark application and registration. You will pay a filing fee of about $250 if submitted online or you can submit it through mail for a filing fee of $300. Your application will receive an application number, filing date and a file will be created. After this process, your trademark application will be marked as pending and will now move to the next step in the application process. The trademark office in Canada will inform you by phone and by mail about and acknowledgement and that status of your application. It is important that you should carefully read the received documents and make sure that there are no errors or omissions.

The next step in the registration process is the examination. A qualified trademark examiner working in CIPO will asess your application and will decide if the trademark will be approved or will be rejected. If it is rejected, you will be informed why and will be able to give you chance to revise certain objections for the rejection of your application so that it can be approved.

If your application is approved, the next step is advertising. Your application will now be published in the Trade-marks Journal issue that is published every week and is available through subscription and in major libraries across Canada. For a period of 2 months of being advertised, your application may be opposed by someone else and can be removed from the normal processing cycle until the opposition is resolved. The main reasons for opposition are because of the similarities between the opposition's trademark and your trademark.

The next step is the allowance for registration. You have to consider that this does not exactly mean that your trademark is already registered. During this process, you will be required to submit a registration fee. And, from this step, your trademark will now become a registered trademark and you will have exclusive rights to use the trademark for your products.

As you can see, the process will take some time. If you don’t know about the step-by-step process in trademark registration in Canada, it is recommended that you should hire an intellectual property lawyer in Canada. They specialize in trademarks, patents and copyright. They will be able to guide you with the requirements needed and you can be sure that your trademark will be approved as soon as possible by CIPO with the assistance of a lawyer that specializes in this field.