402,768 applicants have filed a total of 1,104,036 Canadian trademark applications so far this century, i.e. between 01-January-2000 and 26-July-2021. 25% of those filings were made by less than 1% of those applicants.
The table below breaks the 1,104,036 filings down by mark class:
The next table correlates the 1,104,036 filings to the applicants who made those filings, showing that just 0.76% of the applicants have thus far been responsible for 25% of the 21st century’s filings; 7.59% of the applicants have been responsible for 50% of the filings; etc. The average 21st century applicant has thus far filed 4.26 applications. However, as shown below, 64.28% of the 21st century’s applicants have thus far each filed only 1 application.
The chart below graphically depicts 21st century filings and applicants. The blue line depicts the number of filings per applicant. For example, thus far in the 21st century, 1 applicant has filed 4,270 applications (corresponding to the leftmost point on the blue line) and 258,901 applicants have each filed just 1 application (corresponding to the rightmost point on the blue line). The red line depicts the number of applicants per number of filings. Again, 258,901 applicants have each filed just 1 application (corresponding to the rightmost point on the red line) and 1 applicant has filed 4,270 applications (corresponding to the leftmost point on the red line).
The next table breaks down filings of between 1 and 5 applications per applicant, showing for example that 64.28% (i.e. 258,901) of the 21st century’s applicants have each thus far filed only 1 application; etc.
At the opposite end of the scale, the final table shows the 21st century’s top 30 applicants, ranked in terms of number of filings per applicant. Note that I have not disambiguated the data to account for differences in applicants’ names as presented in the data. For example, Johnson & Johnson probably ranks 2nd with 2,559 filings, assuming that the 5th and 26th ranked “Johnson & Johnson” and “JOHNSON & JOHNSON, a legal entity” are one and the same. Such issues must be kept in mind in working with CIPO’s trademark .xml data.
1 Some practitioners may be unfamiliar with specific marks, which existed under the Trade Mark and Design Act (TMDA), (1868) 31 Vict., c. 55. The TMDA was in force from 1868 until 1932. How can there have been 12 specific mark filings well over half a century after the TMDA was in force? The answer is that these are applications to extend the goods/services coverage of marks that were originally registered under the TMDA. CIPO puts extension applications in the same mark class as the originally filed application.↩
2 See this previous post for an explanation of CIPO’s “Mark Protected by Federal Act of Incorporation” classification.↩
