All posts by Alan Macek

Protective Orders

For those following the recent Federal Court of Appeal decision in Canadian National Railway Company v. BNSF Railway Company, 2020 FCA 45, stating, “Protective orders undoubtedly remain pertinent and useful for intellectual property litigants and there is no justification, legal or otherwise, for stifling this long-standing practice” may be interested in my article for Slaw earlier this year on how we got here and the model orders published by the Federal Court. Continue reading Protective Orders

Trademark Filings in 2019

Approximately 68000 trademark applications were filed in 2019 (up about 6% from 2018). About 33% were filed without an agent (25% of marks prior to June 17; 44% of marks filed after although CIPO appears to be still updating agents for 2019 incoming Madrid marks) compared to about 24% in 2018. There were about 7500 incoming Madrid filings. See more stats, including my annual list of firms filing the most trademark applications. Continue reading Trademark Filings in 2019

Innovation Report

The report, “Intellectual Property in Ontario’s Innovation Ecosystem”, was published today by Ontario’s Expert Panel on IP chaired by Jim Balsillie: “… it was clear that the most significant recurring themes revolved around questions of capacity-building in IP education and access to specialized IP legal services as well as the structure and governance of the various ‘public sector’ entities within the ecosystem.” Continue reading Innovation Report

NAFTA 2.0

Bill C-4 was introduced today to implement the Canada-US-Mexico trade agreement. The IP related changes are substantially the same as those included in Bill C-100 introduced last May. Bill C-4 include a new criminal provisions on trade secrets, trademark changes on importation and in-transit goods, and some changes on copyright term (although not a general extension to life+70).

Continue reading NAFTA 2.0

TM Practice Notices

CIPO posted new and amended practice notices for several aspects of trademark procedures:

  • extensions of time in examination – the office will no longer grant extensions of time unless exceptional circumstances are shown;
  • filing of divisional applications without a specific e-service;
  • transitional provisions for Nice classifications;
  • renewal of applications that do not have Nice classifications; and
  • temporarily appointing a trademark agent for dealing with Nice classifications.

Continue reading TM Practice Notices