Canadian trademark applicants should be careful in the postal addresses and documents submitted to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO).
CIPO has issued a practice notice clarifying and outlining the procedure and requirements for requesting the redaction of postal addresses or the removal of erroneous documents from the Trademarks Document Retrieval Service (TDRS).
The practice notice states that certain documents held by CIPO must be made available to the public and that since the TDRS is built to ensure public access to trademark records, redactions and document removals will be granted under exceptional circumstances only. Additionally, CIPO considers that the name and a postal address of the applicant or registered owner are fundamental information to be included in the Canadian Trademarks Database.
Underscoring the above, in requests to redact a postal address, a request must detail privacy or security concerns specific to the requester’s circumstances (rather than a general concern shared by most applicants or owners). Further, if the postal address to be redacted is the current postal address listed in the Canadian Trademarks Database, the request must provide a new postal address to be included in the register and/or the online Canadian Trademarks Database.
In requests to remove a document not relating to a trademark application or registration, the requester must detail how the document is unrelated to the application or registration and detail the circumstances under which the document was submitted in error.
In both types of requests, the requester will be notified of whether the request was accepted or denied in writing by CIPO.
The full practice notice can be found here.
CIPO Issues Practice Notice On Redacting Postal Addresses And Removing Unrelated Documents From TDRS
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