Recent Changes in Canadian Industrial Design Practice

The Canadian Industrial Design Office released six new practice notices on January 16, 2017.  Copies of the notices may be found here.

The practice changes reflect the Design Office’s desire to provide faster service with improved communication, as well as a desire to update policy in accordance with changing market needs.

The changes are as follows:

1.  The time for responding to Examination Reports will be reduced from 4 months to 3 months.

2.  The Office’s practice of issuing a “Final report” will be replaced with a “Notification of Possible Refusal” with a three month response time, during which an appeal to the Patent Appeal Board may be filed.  Failure to response will result in consideration for refusal and the Applicant will be advised of the decision (as opposed to immediate abandonment of the application). 

3.  There will be an option to hold applications back from registration for a period of 6 months upon payment of a $100 fee (and discontinuation of the current practice of holding a parent case back from registration for 2 months pending filing of divisional applications) – no fee or request would be required if divisional applications are filed simultaneously with a response on the parent case.

4.  There will be an option for earlier examination on the merits (i.e. 6 months after the priority date) if a copy of the foreign priority application is voluntarily filed (otherwise substantive examination will not begin until 6 months after Canadian filing).

5.  Colour may now be recognized as a design feature.

6.  Computer-generated animated designs will be examined as a single design rather than multiple designs.