Canada Trademark and Trade Name Prescreen
This is a free search that we offer for the CIPO trademarks database and provincial corporate and business name registrations for 9 of the 10 provinces. You must do the Quebec search yourself. I call it a prescreen because it definitely should not be relied upon as the only search before an application. But it can give you an idea if there are any knock-out matches and it is free. You are under no obligation. We won’t give your information to anyone else. We won’t contact you again unless you ask us to.
Other Free Searches
CANADA: The Canadian government through CIPO (the Canadian Intellectual Property Office) maintains the on line Canadian Trademark Registry.
United States: Trademarks are basically national in scope, so a registered trademark in the U.S. is not an obstacle to a Canadian trademark per se. However, given our increasingly integrated economies, it’s a good idea to search U.S. Trademark Registry as well.
Search Engines: A trademark does not have to be registered in order to be valid. These are often called common-law trademarks, and they can be a serious problem. Therefore, you should search for unregistered trademarks as well. Many people use search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.
Previous: Where To Search