November 1, 2024 – The delays in correspondence continue. For more information please see the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada’s latest update: click here.

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October 10, 2024 – The Canadian patent industry is experiencing delays with the Canadian Patent Office (CPO) processing correspondence at this time.

We advise that CPO has been in what we consider a “black out period” of reduced capacity for almost the last 3 months as it brings online a new operating system called MyCIPO Patents. The new operating system came fully on-line at the beginning of October 2024. The new system is to be a “real-time” system where our correspondence is updated immediately to the CPO database without having to go through the “scanning department” of the old system.

Earlier this week we received information that CPO is working on mail received between the dates of June 15, 2024 and September 30, 2024, which has to be processed through the previous scanning approach and transitioned to the MyCIPO Patents database. However, CPO is slow to move correspondence received during this black out period onto the new operating system. In our opinion, CPO is being very cautious to insure maintaining the integrity of their data. At some time in the future, we hope to see CPO accelerate its pace of processing correspondence received during the black out period.

HOWEVER, in the meantime, we are starting to experience incorrect status notifications for patents/applications located on the on-line Canadian patent database due to the delays in processing correspondence. In some instances, we are seeing the status incorrectly changed to “DEEMED ABANDONED”, which we find very alarming. When contacting CPO, we have been advised that our correspondence was received and that this status should be reversed when the correspondence delays are addressed.  If you have a similar experience, you should contact the Canadian Patent Office and/or your Canadian Patent Agent.