A backlog of trademark applications awaiting initial substantive examination by CIPO has developed over the past few years. Can the backlog be quantified, apart from anecdotal evidence? Yes it can—by working with CIPO’s trademark .xml data.The “Total Filings” column in the table below (based on CIPO’s .xml data as of 19-Apr-2021) provides a June 2019 through March 2021 monthly breakdown of trademark application filings—including both Madrid and non-Madrid filings but excluding Section 9 applications. The “Total Inactive” column shows the number of applications filed in each month which have become inactive due to abandonment, withdrawal, etc. The “Total Examined” column shows the number of applications filed in each month which have been examined. The “Total Unexamined” column shows the number of applications filed in each month which have not yet been examined—these applications form part of CIPO’s unexamined application backlog1.
As I explain below, CIPO’s unexamined application backlog is much larger than the above table suggests. The table extends back only as far as June of 2019 to illustrate the effect of the 17 June 2019 coming into force of significant amendments to the Trademarks Act, RSC 1985 c. T-13 (TMA). The amendments made many changes to Canada’s trademark regime, one of which facilitates Canadian trademark protection pursuant to the Madrid Protocol, as CIPO explains here.
An important consequence of the Madrid Protocol is that certain deadlines are imposed on CIPO itself. CIPO’s efforts to meet those deadlines have impacted the unexamined application backlog, as shown in the next table. The table (again based on CIPO’s .xml data as of 19-Apr-2021) provides a June 2019 through March 2021 monthly breakdown pertaining to Madrid applications received by CIPO2. Note the high percentages of Madrid applications filed in June, July and August 2019 which have been examined. This reflects CIPO’s prioritization of the examination of Madrid applications in order to meet the deadlines imposed on CIPO by the Madrid Protocol.
The next table (again based on CIPO’s .xml data as of 19-Apr-2021) breaks out the percentage of non-Madrid applications which have been examined, to provide a June 2019 through March 2021 monthly comparison of CIPO’s examination of Madrid applications, non-Madrid applications and all (i.e. both Madrid and non-Madrid) applications. As can be seen, CIPO’s prioritization of the examination of Madrid applications has impacted the examination of non-Madrid applications.
The above tables do not give the complete picture of CIPO’s unexamined examination backlog because they only extend back to June 2019 in order to illustrate the “Madrid effect”. In fact, the current backlog of unexamined applications includes cases filed as long ago as April of 2018 and in every month since then. To see the complete picture of CIPO’s unexamined examination backlog as of 19-Apr-2021, click on the “Unexamined Application Backlog” tab at the top of this page (on a mobile device, use the menu to scroll to and select the “Unexamined Application Backlog” page). As can be seen, as of 19-Apr-2021:
- a total of 209,980 applications had been filed since 01-Apr-2018 (this includes both Madrid and non-Madrid applications, but excludes Section 9 applications)
- 6,241 of those applications have become inactive (i.e. abandoned, withdrawn, etc.)
- 42,586 (i.e. 20.9%) of the remaining active applications have been examined
- 161,153 (i.e. 79.1%) of the active applications are still awaiting examination.
1 Unexamined applications are those for which the <tmk:MarkEventDescriptionText> XML element contains either “Formalized” or “Pre-formalized”. Inactive applications are those for which the <tmk:MarkCurrentStatusInternalDescriptionText> XML element contains a description such as abandoned, cancelled, inactivated, removed, withdrawn, etc. To determine the number of examined applications for a given month/year, subtract the number of unexamined applications and the number of inactive applications from the total number of applications filed in that month/year.↩
