Trademarks: Priority Foreign Filing Deadline

Trademark registration is jurisdictional, meaning you file applications to register a trademark in each country you want to protect your brand. After filing a Canadian trademark application, you may also want to protect your brand in other countries like the United States.

Paris Convention

The Paris Convention is an international intellectual property (IP) treaty that provides a priority right for filing subsequent foreign trademark applications. For example, if you file a US trademark application within 6 months of the filing date of the Canadian trademark application, you can claim priority to the earlier Canadian filing date.

How does priority foreign filing benefit you?

The benefit of foreign priority is that once you file in Canada, you don't have to file immediately in other countries. That is, you don't have to worry about other parties filing for your trademark in other countries during the 6 month period starting after your Canadian filing.

For example, if you file the mark VITA in Canada on April 5, 2022 and another party files for the same mark VITA in the US on June 5, 2022, you can file your US application after them on August 5, 2022 and your application will receive priority to the earlier Canadian filing date of April 5th. That is your later filed US application is first in line (e.g. takes precedence) ahead of the third party US application due to your priority to the Canadian filing date.

Another benefit of foreign priority is that it can help spread out the costs of protecting your brand as you can file subsequent applications within 6 months of the first trademark application, instead of requiring you to file all trademark applications at the same time.

Interested in registering your trademark in Canada or elsewhere? Contact Sander Law to get started!

The above content is for informational purposes only and is not legal or professional advice.