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Proactive Disclosure
Annual Report 2007-08
Strategic direction: Client services
- Patents
- Patent Appeal Board
- Trade-marks
- Trade-marks Opposition Board
- Copyrights
- Industrial designs
- Integrated circuit topographies
- Accessible, user-friendly products, services and processes
- Clear, consistent, accurate and comprehensive communications
Trade-marks
The Trade-marks Branch is responsible for registering trade-marks — words, symbols or designs used to distinguish products or services in the marketplace. The Branch examines applications for trade-mark registration, grants registrations to qualifying applicants, and records new information when trade-mark rights are assigned to a new owner.
Over the past five years, the Branch has significantly improved its TATs from filing to first actions from 17 months down to 6 months.
Highlights
The Branch spent a significant amount of time mapping and reviewing its key processes with the intent of improving overall quality and identifying areas targeted for improvements.
This work was done in preparation for both the EBR and the quality management initiatives.
In 2007–08, the Branch received 47 586 new applications for trade-marks, an increase from the 45 374 applications received in 2006–07. Of the total received in 2007–08, 25 314 trade-marks were registered.
In striving to maintain TATs at 6 months from filing to first action and at 4 months for subsequent client correspondence, the Branch hired 24 new examiners, of which 13 were fully trained in 2007–08. The other 11 will complete their training in the next fiscal year. Furthermore, the Branch will continue recruiting as needed in future years to ensure that sufficient resources are in place to maintain the 6-month TAT and to stabilize the inventory of applications awaiting examination.
In addition to hiring new examiners, key management positions were also staffed in 2007–08. These staffings will allow the Branch to move forward on the EBR initiative, as well as focus on the quality management initiatives.
The Branch outsourced the translation service to a third party, and also introduced the translation of the wares/services at the initial stages of the applications, thereby providing assistance to the examiners in achieving consistent and quality examination.
The Branch started implementing a quality management system in 2007–08. Employees in both examination and operations attended workshops on quality, and a Quality Management Committee was established to prepare criteria and a plan for the review of files at different stages of the process.
Annual Report 2007-08
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