BASIC SEARCH & OPINION

Before preparing your trademark application, we will perform a basic knockout search and provide you with a preliminary opinion assessing the likelihood of the approval of your application. If it is determined that your application will likely be rejected by the Trade-marks Office, you have the option at this point not to proceed any further.

PREPARING & FILING THE APPLICATION

We will then collect additional information from you regarding your trademark and its use or proposed use. We will prepare your application according to the requirements of the Trade-marks Act and the practice rules of the Trade-marks Office. Your application will be filed electronically with the Trade-marks Office in a timely manner to ensure the preservation of your rights against your competitors. We will send you a report confirming the filing of your application and outlining the details of the filing for your records.

PROSECUTING THE APPLICATION

If the Trade-marks Office has any objections to your application, it will issue an office action describing its objections and requesting a response. At this point, the application enters the prosecution stage, where all objections must be addressed properly in order for the Trade-marks Office to approve the application. We will report each office action, along with our analysis of the objections put forth by the Trade-marks Office and the arguments that can be made to overcome them. We will then prepare each response and file it with the Trade-marks Office.

REPORTING THE APPROVAL, ADVERTISEMENT & ACCEPTANCE OF THE APPLICATION

Next, the application will move through the approval, advertisement and acceptance stages of the application process. We will keep track of the progress of your application and send you regular updates, as well as inform you of pending deadlines. After notifying you of the Trade-marks Office's approval of your application, we will forward you a copy of the notice that will be advertised to the public. We will also inform you when the notice has actually been published and notify you if an opposition by a third party has been filed within the two-month advertisement period.

However, if your application is opposed, it will be taken out of both the Trade-marks Office’s processing cycle and our maintenance of your application until the opposition is resolved. At this point, we will advise you of your options and help you to make an informed and strategic decision on how to proceed next. If there is no opposition, or if any oppositions have been resolved successfully, we will notify you when your application has been officially accepted for registration by the Trade-marks Office.

REGISTRATION OF THE TRADEMARK

Our maintenance of your application ends when your trademark is offically entered on the Canadian Trademark Register. We will file your final registration fee and forward to you the Certificate of Registration for your trademark. If your application is based on proposed use, we will also prepare and file the required Declaration of Use with the Trade-marks Office.

AN OVERVIEW OF WHAT WE DO

[What the Trade-marks Office Does]

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