26 March 2021

Nurses!? What about Kinsmen / Canadian Clubs?

CIPO’s “Mark Protected by Federal Act of Incorporation” category

The Help file associated with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s online trademark database contains a section headed The various categories of marks.  One such category (as of 22-Mar-2021) is Mark Protected by Federal Act of Incorporation as shown in the Help file extract below:

Nursing citation in CIPO Help file
The reference to an Act to Incorporate the Canadian Nurses Association appears to be an anachronism that should be removed from the Help file.

22 March 2021

Accelerated (expedited) Search and Examination

In its 14-Dec-2020 “Requests for expedited examination” Practice Notice CIPO explains that it “...does not currently grant requests to examine trademark applications out of order”.  The Notice then outlines an exception for “...applications associated with medical goods or services related to COVID-19”.  Does the data tell us anything about expedited examination?

18 March 2021

NIDS objections—does the data help?

If you inspect any of CIPO’s 1.7 million trademark .xml files—even for a mark initially protected under the Trade Mark and Design Act (1868) 31 Vict., c. 55 or under the Unfair Competition Act (1932) 22-23 Geo. V, c. 38—you will discover that the file contains a tmk:TradeDistinctivenessIndicator element encapsulating either the word “true” or the word “false”.

12 March 2021

How current is the data?

If you work with CIPO’s trademark .xml data—or with CIPO’s online trademark database—you may encounter situations in which you need to know the exact date of the most recent event details represented in the data—or in the online database.

09 March 2021

Montreal or Montréal? ETL and data cleansing

If you click the Agent Rankings By City tab at the top of this page, then scroll down, you will find not one but four separate tabulations for: Montreal, Québec; Montreal, Quebec; Montréal, Quebec; and Montréal, Québec.  Why isnt there just one tabulation combining those four city / province combinations as shown below (click to enlarge the image)?

05 March 2021

Prosecution Events

Users of CIPO’s online trademark database will be familiar with the Action History that appears upon inspection of any “hit” returned by searching the database.  You can’t search Action History events via the online database, but you can do powerful event-based searches by working with the .xml data.

01 March 2021

Mark Categories & Classes (the tmk:MarkCategory and catmk:TrademarkClass elements)

CIPO exposes only a limited number of categories and classes of marks via the online trademark database.  You can uncover many more by working with the .xml data.