As innovators and businesses around the world work toward solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office is helping to ensure innovators can protect their patents and get their products to market as soon as possible. We are pleased to announce that we have launched a pilot project that will allow small entities (universities, or businesses employing 50 or fewer employees) to request that the examination of their patent applications for COVID-19-related products be accelerated. This process will apply to COVID-19-related products where the claimed invention is currently or has been subject to a Health Canada approval process. Applicants can request accelerated examination using any method of communication found in chapter 2 of the Manual of Patent Office Practice, including the general correspondence online service, which has been modified to offer this category of request. This pilot project will be limited to 50 applicants.