Practice Notice

Improving Data Quality Trade-mark Applications

Publication Date: 2000-10-04

The Trade-marks Office would like to remind clients of the following notice published December 1, 1999 (now updated):

The following methods/forms of submitting a trade-mark application to the Trade-marks Office will assist the Trade-marks Office in improving the overall quality of the information entered into the trade-marks database (INTREPID).

Trade-mark Office Online Electronic Filing (Electronic Commerce)

The electronic filing system available on the CIPO web site allows the electronic application to be directly loaded into the INTREPID database with no data entry performed by the Trade-marks Office staff. This means that the application will be exactly the same as the applicant/agent has submitted with no possibility of Office generated typing mistakes or misinterpretations of the application.

Paper Application with an Accompanying Diskette

For new and revised applications containing long statements of wares and services, clients are encouraged, on a voluntary basis, to submit an electronic copy (on diskette) of the application along with the paper application. The electronic copy will be used to "Copy and Paste" information into the INTREPID database thereby reducing keying errors and improving the overall quality of the database. The paper application will remain the official version of the application in case of any discrepancies between the paper application and the electronic copy.

The electronic copy should be on a 3 1/2" diskette in PC format. The information may be stored using most versions of Microsoft Word, most versions of WordPerfect, Text files, RTF files, HTML files. The diskette will be returned to the sender.

The image of the trade-mark design may also be submitted on diskette. This may allow for a clearer reproduction of complex or fine detailed designs. The file format for the designs must be 300 dpi, black and white, stored in TIFF.

Drawings

Sub-section 27(1) of the Trade-marks Regulations (1996) indicates that a drawing of a trade-mark shall not be larger than 2 3/4 inches by 2 3/4 inches (7 cm x 7 cm). It is the experience of the Office that drawings of this size are not always easily scanned and entered into the INTREPID database and the Registrar is often asking applicants to file a new and larger drawing in accordance with sub-section 27(2) of the regulations. Clients are asked to submit drawings as large as possible (up to but not larger than 8 1/2 inches by 14 inches (22 cm x 35 cm)). This will help reduce the number of times the Office must request a new drawing and improve the overall quality of the reproduction of trade-mark designs.

Scanning Paper Applications

Where possible the Office will attempt to scan and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) a paper application to then "copy and paste" the information into the INTREPID database. While the OCR process is not exact, the typeface (font, size, attributes) of the application may affect the overall quality of the OCR process. To ensure the best quality for OCR purposes the following typeface attributes should be used:

Font: a sans serif font like Arial or Helvetica
Size: 12 point
Attributes: Normal or Bold is acceptable
Other Considerations: please have the wares/services in lower case characters (except for the first letter of a sentence). If the wares/services are all in upper case this will require retyping.

The following typeface attributes should be avoided:

Font: a serif font like Times Roman due to the fact that the serifs tend to join letters together with OCR software.
Size: 10 point or smaller

Attributes: where ever possibly do NOT use italics, underlining or any combination of these.