Trademarks: Goods & Services Statement
When you apply for trademark registration, in addition to identifying your trademark, you need to specify the types of products and/or services you are selling in association with the trademark.
Purpose
The Goods & Services statement defines the scope of protection for your trademark. That is, your trademark registration will provide protection for your mark for those products/services you identify in the application. For example, another business could not register the same trademark for the same or similar products and services as you, but could register the same trademark for completely different products and services.
How to describe your Goods & Services
The Goods & Services statement should describe your products and services in their ordinary commercial terms (e.g. common or generic name of product/service).
It is beneficial to describe your products and services in a broad manner to keep the scope of your trademark protection broad. However, you can choose to include both broad & narrow descriptions of your services, to allow for broad protection but also identify the precise items you are selling (e.g. legal services (broad) & legal services relating to intellectual property rights (narrow)).
A good starting place is the online CIPO goods & services manual that identifies approved descriptions of products and services. A benefit of selecting the approved descriptions for the application is that you will likely avoid future Examiner objections regarding the goods & services statement being imprecise.
Current and Future
In the trademark application, you can include both the products and services you currently sell, and also those that you intend to sell in the future. By including both in the same application you can save on filing fees, provided they are in the same product or service category.
Costs
CIPO charges filing fees based on the number of categories of products and services that are included in the application. The fee is $330CDN for the first category of product or service and $100CDN for each additional category of product or service. Learn more about the NICE classification system, which defines how the goods and services are categorized for trademark applications.
Contact Sander Law today to file your trademark application today!
The above content is for informational purposes only and is not legal or professional advice.