In Is CIPO Done With Pre-Assessment? I suggested that CIPO may have paused—or possibly terminated—its pre-assessment initiative, since only 521 pre-assessment letters were sent two weeks ago, none being sent after 28-Jul-2022. However CIPO’s weekly trademark .xml data release for 02-Aug-2022 through 08-Aug-2022 reveals another 869 pre-assessment letters—all dated 04-Aug-2022.
The pre-assessment initiative accordingly appears to be limping along. 129,770 pre-assessment letters have been sent between 23-Mar-2022 and 08-Aug-2022 inclusive, as tabulated below.
97 (11%) of the 869 pre-assessment letters sent on 04-Aug-2022 pertain to applications filed in 2019; 131 (15%) to applications filed in 2020; 94 (11%) to applications filed in 2021 and 547 (63%) to applications filed in 2022. 461 (53%) of the applications were very recently filed: on 25-28 July 2022 respectively. It thus appears that CIPO may be refocusing pre-assessment on newly filed applications, with reduced focus on the approximately 49,000 applications filed between 2019 and 2021 which remain unexamined without having undergone pre-assessment.
