The government announced a public engagement on “how to strengthen and modernize Canada’s geographical indications regime under the Trademarks Act.” A focus is on Indigenous engagement and potential additional categories, such as traditional crafts and industrial products. The engagement extends from May 28 to August 27, 2026 Continue reading Geographic Indicators
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Patentable Subject Matter
CIPO has issued its preliminary determination on the Dusome remand following the Federal Court’s decision in Dusome v. Canada (Attorney General), 2025 FC 1809. My colleague Richard Mar has the following summary and context.
Appointments
François Joyal, Senior General Counsel at the Department of Justice Canada in Montréal, was appointed a Judge of the Federal Court. Appointments were also made today in Alberta and Ontario. Continue reading Appointments
IP Consultation
The government has opened a public consultation on 1) client-agent privilege; 2) unauthorized practice before CIPO; 3) clarity of patent ownership information; and 4) requirements of patent demand letters. The consultation is open until April 24th.
Federal Courts Rules
Amendments to the Federal Courts Rules, primarily to update the Tariff B regime for cost awards, are coming into force later this month. The amendments introduce a new Tariff B that has three columns, more litigation steps and more units. The Rules Committee estimates it will increase cost awards by about 25% “thereby aligning the tariff more closely with the amounts typically awarded under the ‘lump sum’ approach” and provide a “more consistent and predictable regime.” The changes also replace remaining references to “Prothonotary” with “Associate Judge”. Continue reading Federal Courts Rules
Proceeedings
Several matters started earlier this year were missed from the email alerts, including several IP proceedings. These missed IP proceeding are included below. Continue reading Proceeedings
National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
The Federal Courts and the Canadian Intellectual Property Offices will be closed on Tuesday September 30th for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to honour the children who never returned home and survivors of residential schools. Continue reading National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
CIPO
Most of CIPO’s online applications for patents, trademarks, copyright and industrial designs will be offline this week: “Due to scheduled maintenance, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) e-commerce applications [] will be unavailable from Friday, at 8 pm until Sunday, at 10 pm (ET).” Continue reading CIPO
CIPO
CIPO has announced downtime this weekend: “Due to essential maintenance for government cloud services, all e-commerce applications at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) will be unavailable on Saturday, August 16, from 12:00 am to 11:59 pm (ET).”
Outage
Unfortunately, there was a significant server outage last week on the system that supports this website and the daily email service. I’m still working on getting things back online. In the meantime, some aspects of the website may not be fully operational. Thanks for your patience! Continue reading Outage