Withdrawal of advertisement of a trademark application

Publication Date: June 17, 2019

This notice is intended to clarify the practice of the Trademarks Office with respect to the withdrawal of an advertisement under subsection 37(4) of the Trademarks Act (“Act”).

Subsection 37(4) of the Act gives the Registrar the authority to withdraw the advertisement of an application for the registration of a trademark, so long as the trademark has not been registered.

Situations in which the Registrar may be satisfied that an application should not have been advertised include:

  • the applicant was not entitled to registration in view of a confusing pending application;
  • an objection under section 12 of the Act was overlooked or withdrawn in error

A situation in which the Registrar may be satisfied that an application was incorrectly advertised would be where information, amendments or statements that were included in the latest application were omitted from the advertisement in error.

Please note that in view of section 70 of the amended Act, subsection 37(4) of the Act does not apply to applications that were advertised prior to .