Each week the
Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) releases thousands of XML files containing detailed information about Canadian trademarks—one file per trademark. If a new trademark application is filed, CIPO publishes a new XML file for that application. If a step is taken—either by the trademark owner or by CIPO—in relation to an existing trademark application or registration, CIPO republishes the XML file for that application/registration to reflect that step.
By inspecting CIPO’s trademark XML data one may discover information that cannot be discovered by searching CIPO’s
online trademark database, For example, the database’s Additional Search Options feature lets you choose one or more Category options:
Suppose you’re interested in Prohibited/Official Marks. By checking the Prohibited/Official Marks Category box, and unchecking all of the other Category boxes, you can restrict your search to retrieve only Prohibited/Official Marks. But suppose you’re interested in a particular sub-category of Prohibited/Official Marks, e.g. University marks recorded pursuant to
Trademarks Act s. 9(1)(n)(ii). You can’t restrict a search of CIPO’s online trademark database to retrieve only University marks, but you can do exactly that if you're working with CIPO’s trademark XML data.
As another example, suppose you want to look at marks for which a particular trademark agent is responsible, or marks for which a particular office of a multi-office trademark agency firm is responsible. You can’t do an agent-specific search of CIPO’s online trademark database. The agent-specific information is contained within the database, but CIPO doesn’t expose ‘agent’ as an available search field. The only fields you can search via the online database are the ones you see here (click the image to enlarge it):
By working with CIPO’s trademark XML data you can do agent-specific or agent-office specific searches.
Those are just two examples of many different types of information that can be obtained by working with CIPO’s trademark XML data to derive useful “business intelligence” such as:
- The extent of CIPO’s backlog of unexamined applications
- Trends, such as the average number of days taken to issue a 1st examiner’s report for applications filed over each of the past 10 years
- Significance of non-agent (pro se) filings, e.g. in comparison to filings by agents
- Monitor currently active opposition or Section 45 cancellation proceedings
- Review the most common word marks filed in Canada during any year or range of years
- Explore Canada-specific Vienna Classifications, e.g. “snowmobiles”, “cowgirls”, etc.
- and much more—click any of the tabs along the top of this page to see some examples (on a mobile device, use the dropdown menu to scroll through the examples and choose one).
This blog will discuss CIPO’s trademark XML data and the derivation of useful business intelligence from the data.
