TRADEMARK MATTERSTM
Spring 2010 Edition
TRADE-MARKS OFFICE
International views
CIPO launched another consultation period in order to harmonize the Trade-marks Act to better suit Canadian companies' commercial and economic realities of the international markets. Canadian companies would to benefit from the adhesion to the Madrid Protocol and the Singapore Treaty.
The Madrid Protocol would allow Canadian companies to file a single trade-mark application with CIPO and extend their protection to all country members, therefore allowing considerable economic and procedural advantages.
The Singapore Treaty would serve to harmonize the registration proceedings with all other country members of such Treaty.
Actually, Canadian applicants must file individual applications for each country in which they wish to register their trade-mark, often managing registration proceedings in a different way than Canada, resulting in more expensive proceedings. These multi applications also make it more difficult and hazardous to manage the trade-mark portfolio.
Details :
http://www.opic.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/wr02258.html.
TRADEMARK PRACTICE
New internet extensions = new litigations
New country code domain name extensions will be granted, increasing company owners' fears of new litigations with respect to trademark cybersquatting.
Particularly, these new extensions will be in the local language and most of them will not be in Latin script. Companies will need to be even more cautious and ensure that they register their main trademarks with these new extensions, assuming that they will be able to do so according to the registration rules that will apply for each extension. The date at which these new extensions will be in force is not yet decided but is expected to be in the mid-2010.
New generic top level domains will also be registrable by individuals, companies, group of people, etc. Trademark owners will be able to register their trademarks as a generic top level domain such as “.trademark” to be used, for example, by distributors. Also, group of professionals such as engineers will be able to register a top level “.engineer”, and so on.
Four grounds will be likely to be raised against registration of such a top level, one of them being that said top level infringes the plaintiff's trademarks rights.
Sources: « Domain names : a brand new world » - IPIC webinar www.ipic.ca – February 25, 2010, Catherine Douglas and Éric Maccramalla.
ICANN : http://icann.org/.
ARTICLES
You may now read our most recent article on our website site : SAVOIR SE CYPER PROTÉGER. (French only)
CONFERENCES
Isabelle Deshaies will be presenting a conference on Intellectual Property basics on April 29, 2010, at the Chamber of Commerce of Drummond.
Details: http://www.ccid.qc.ca/.
© Isabelle Deshaies
March 2010
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