The Trademarks Opposition Board (TMOB) will soon be implementing changes to 2 practice notices:
This comes in view of the improvements realized by the TMOB in the timelines for obtaining a hearing date and non-hearing decision, and is consistent with its continuous efforts to provide more timely and efficient proceedings.
These changes, which will take effect on , include the reduction of the current benchmarks for extensions of time and the cooling off period.
Deadlines already fixed and extension requests already made prior to December 1 will not be impacted by these changes. However, requests for extensions of time received on or after December 1 will be subject to the revised extensions of time.
Additionally, considering the efficiencies gained in conducting cross-examinations by videoconference, the period granted by the Registrar to conduct a cross-examination will decrease from 4 to 2 months. Cross examination orders issued pursuant to:
- requests made prior to December 1 will not be impacted by this change and will provide 4 months to conduct cross-examination
- requests made on or after December 1 will provide 2 months to conduct cross-examination
Other minor updates have also been made to these practice notices.
To find out about all upcoming changes, we invite you to consult these 2 summary pages, where current and upcoming versions of the practice notices are presented side by side.