The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has now updated its Service and Website Interruptions page to inform the public of a new final deadline extension in response to the ongoing health crisis.

Deadline Extension

In response to the ongoing health crisis, CIPO had provided extensions for certain deadlines falling after March 16, 2020 to August 21, 2020.  These extensions had been implemented successively as CIPO monitored the health crisis.  The last extension to August 21, 2020 had been announced by CIPO as its “final” such extension.  However, almost immediately after making this announcement, CIPO announced yet a further extension was being implemented.  This was being done to provide relief in view of the anticipated online and facsimile service interruptions occurring between August 21 to August 23 due to maintenance.

To account for these service interruptions, the CIPO has now announced that the extension will continue through to August 28, 2020.  Furthermore, we have noted that CIPO has not characterized this additional deadline extension as final, so it is possible that CIPO will consider offering additional extensions.

We recommend that, where possible, clients should aim to meet the original deadlines.  

* This is an update to our previous alerts on this topic.