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24 www.canadianlawyermag.com lacked inherent distinctiveness, he says, this provoked a "tremendous backlash" from trademark lawyers because case law does not back the objections. "Because they were raising so many objections, a huge percentage of applica- tions were now being thrown back at appli- cants. Then applicants had to respond," says Lapin. "Now the examiners not only had more applications that they had to deal with, but they had more objections that they were raising, and more responses to objec- tions, and they had the irate trademark community complaining that these objec- tions were without foundation." Lapin says the ordeal also resulted in examiner retraining, which further slowed down processing. The elimination of the use requirement means trademark applicants do not need to show that they are using a mark to register it. "With use no longer being a prerequisite to registration, more applications were filed," All the lawyers who spoke with Canadian Lawyer noted that the trademarks office is working hard to expedite processing. "There are huge backlogs, yes. But the trademarks office is doing everything they can to try to alleviate the situation," says Dillon. According to Simard, the spokesperson from ISED, the trademarks office has cut wait times down by 22 months for trade- mark applications comprised of goods and services selected from their pre-approved list, which they have expanded from 62,457 to 122,843 entries. Since April, CIPO has pre-assessed goods, services, and Nice Classification informa- tion in all unexamined trademark applica- tions and sent the results to applicants. The office has issued 128,009 letters and is now pre-assessing applications within five busi- ness days of filing, says Simard. He says 93 percent of CIPO correspon- dence was in paper form before the pandemic, but now it is at eight percent. CIPO says in 2020 it launched a "new electronic General Correspondence online service" and this year it launched "enhanced Trademark E-Services," which includes new online services and "has automated a number of transactions." "Since the implementation of these measures, CIPO has observed positive gains, including an increase of 82 percent in the number of examiner first reports issued and an increase of 54 percent in trademark approvals for the fiscal year 2021/22, compared to the previous year," says Simard. "The office has also seen an increase in registrations for the fiscal year 2021/22 by 28 percent compared to the previous year." RISE IN NUMBER OF TRADEMARK APPLICATIONS "Nobody anticipated how popular Canada would be as a place to protect trademarks ... Canada just wasn't equipped to deal with this flood of new applications" Philip Lapin, Smart & Biggar LLP LEGAL REPORT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY says Dillon. "People were taking advantage of the fact that, as long as they had an intent to use in the future, they could file in Canada and get a registration without having to declare use." The pandemic also added to the delays, says Lapin. "The reason that was such a signif- icant problem is because the trademarks office was, and still is, almost entirely paper-based," he says. Because of lockdowns, no one could print and mail letters for a while. But Lapin adds that the trademarks office is currently digitizing its files, moving from regular mail to email, and expanding its online services. 8% increase from 2018 and 51% increase from 2010 2019 Fiscal year 2020/21 Fiscal year 2021/22 68,277 76,168 79,808