IP monitor: Canadian Intellectual Property Office announces further extension of deadlines in wake of pandemic

As previously reported in our Brand Protection Blog, given the continuing challenges faced by all businesses in dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) will relax filing deadlines for the remainder of March and April 2020. This decision was first announced on March 16 and further updated on March 30.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/wr00050.html

 

What you need to know

All deadlines under the Trademarks Act, Patent Act and Industrial Design Act falling between March 16, 2020, and April 30, 2020, inclusive are automatically extended to May 1, 2020, as a result of the unforeseen disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. CIPO may be prepared to further extend the May 1, 2020, deadline if warranted by the circumstances.

At this time, CIPO remains open for business and as such, to the extent possible, we recommend clients continue to meet deadlines as they fall due. Moreover, since CIPO is still open, clients should not rely on this exceptional extension provided by CIPO to secure an application priority date.

Under the circumstances, clients should expect significant delays in all CIPO services.

CIPO has now furthermore advised of a service interruption of its document orders that were supposed to resume on March 31, 2020, but the interruption has been extended. When these services resume all document orders will be queued and processed in the order in which they were received.

CIPO’s regionals offices are closed. However, to ensure continuity of its services, CIPO’s online solutions are still available 24/7.

Our technology infrastructure enables our professionals and staff to work remotely for an extended period. As such, we will continue to meet original CIPO deadlines as instructed by clients. The extension, however, provides clients a safety net to help navigate this unprecedented situation.

For more information on the legal implications of COVID-19, please consult our COVID-19 Hub. As a full-service global firm with offices across Canada, Norton Rose Fulbright is closely monitoring this evolving situation over a number of practice areas, including employment and labour, risk advisory, banking and finance, corporate, M&A and securities, and dispute resolution and litigation, and across a variety of industries, including energy, infrastructure, mining and commodities, financial institutions, life sciences and healthcare, technology and innovation, and transport.