ARCHIVED — Industrial Design: Notice of allowance

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Consultation Updates

April 4th, 2010

Consultation comments received:

Please note that comments are in the language in which they were submitted to CIPO.

Consultation Period

Consultation period: January 11, 2011 to March 11, 2011

Consultation and Discussion

As part of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office's (CIPO) commitment to provide quality and timely intellectual property rights, the Industrial Design Office requests your participation in a consultation regarding a courtesy notification of allowance.

Current Practice

Once an industrial design application has been examined and the design meets all the requirements for registration, the Office considers the application to be in an "allowable" state, i.e. the design is in condition to be registered. Although the Industrial Design Act requires the Office to issue a certificate of registration once a design is registered (section 7), there is no requirement for the Office to issue any notification of allowance.

Once the application is allowed, the current practice of the Office is to register the design within twenty-four (24) hours, unless: the applicant has requested a delay of registration, or, there are one or more divisionals or associated applications for similar designs by the same applicant that are not yet in an allowable state. In the latter case, it is the Office's practice to hold up the allowed application(s) until such time as the associated application(s) are also allowable, and then to register all related designs on the same day. This is done in order to prevent one or more of such designs being registered prior to the other(s), which could result in the citation of a registered design against the design(s) still pending. Please see Section 6.7 of the Industrial Design Office Practices.

Proposed Change

Although there is no legislative requirement, consideration is being given to providing a notification of allowance as a courtesy. This is being considered in order to provide applicants with information about the allowed status of an application and any divisionals or associated applications. In order to provide this notification in a cost-effective manner and without introducing an undue delay to registration, the Office is considering providing this notification via a system-generated e-mail. The notification would indicate the date of allowance and could also include information as to whether there are any divisional(s) or other associated application(s), and whether there is any delay of registration in effect. In addition to this information, the applicant would be informed about the expected timing for registration, as follows:

  • In the case where no non-allowed divisional(s) or non-allowed associated application(s) exist: The design will be registered upon the expiry of five (5) days from the date of the notification of allowance unless a delay of registration has been requested, in which case the design will be registered upon expiry of the delay.
  • In the case where one or more non-allowed divisional(s) or non-allowed associated application(s) exist: The design will be registered with the related designs after all applications are in an allowable state.

Any further instructions from an applicant after this notification that would affect the timing of registration as stated above would have to be submitted before registration of the design as described in the notification, and must be submitted through the electronic service that will be provided for that purpose.

Further instructions might include: notification of any further divisional(s) or missed association(s), a request to delay registration, or a request to cease a delay of registration before its expiry. Applicants are strongly encouraged to accelerate the prosecution of any non-allowed associated applications that are holding up allowed applications.

Request for comments

System changes would be required to implement such practice changes and CIPO therefore seeks your comments before engaging in further analysis or work in this regard. All comments will be posted on our website following the consultation period for three (3) months from the date of posting.

Should you wish to provide comments, please submit them by March 11, 2011. They may be sent by email to the attention of Rita Carreau, by fax at 819-953-CIPO (819-953-2476), or by regular mail to the following address:

  • Canadian Intellectual Property Office
  • Copyright and Industrial Design Branch
  • 50 Victoria Street
  • Place du Portage II
  • Gatineau QC K1A 0C9
  • Attention: Rita Carreau

Thank you for your participation and interest in this matter.

  • Felix Dionne
  • Acting Director
  • Copyright and Industrial Design Branch