The Canadian Trade-marks Office will be changing its policy regarding the granting of extensions of time to respond to Office Actions in order to improve and expedite the examination of trade-marks.

Effective March 11, 2010, the Trade-marks Office will only grant a single 6-month extension of time to respond to an Office Action.   This means that all issues raised by the Office will now have to be  addressed in timely manner or else there is a risk that the application may be refused.

The new Practice Notice outlines some exceptions to the new rule, including cases where a confusing mark has been cited and the applicant has commenced either expungement or opposition proceedings against the cited mark, or where the applicant has relied upon a foreign application and it has not yet matured to registration.

For further information about the new Practice Notice or any other trade-mark matter, please contact us.