On 1 January 2024, the CIPO updated certain of its service standards with respect to trademark applications and registrations. Notably, these service standards are significantly longer than the previous service standards and more accurately reflect the amount of time it is currently taking for trademark applications to be examined by the CIPO.

In particular, the service standard for the CIPO sending a first action (approval or first report) for an online-filed trademark application has been updated to 18 months for applications using pre-approved descriptions of goods/services and 28 months for applications not using pre-approved descriptions. For reference, as of 31 January 2024, according to the CIPO, the filing date of trademark applications currently being distributed for examination is 19 May 2022 for applications using pre-approved descriptions and 6 June 2019 for applications not using pre-approved descriptions.

The updated service standards can be found here.