A trademark protects your brand name, logo, or slogan. A patent protects a new invention. They're not interchangeable, and using the wrong one, or assuming you're protected when you're not, is one of the most common and expensive mistakes Canadian businesses make with their intellectual property.
What's the difference between a trademark, patent, copyright, and industrial design?
Canada has four separate types of intellectual property protection, and each one protects something different:
- Trademark: a brand name, logo, slogan, or other identifier that distinguishes your goods or services from a competitor's
- Patent: a new invention (a product, process, or improvement that's novel, useful, and not obvious)
- Copyright: original literary, artistic, dramatic, or musical works; arises automatically, no registration needed
- Industrial design: the visual appearance (shape, pattern, or ornamentation) of a manufactured article
A single product can involve more than one at once: a piece of software might have a patentable process, copyrighted code, a trademarked product name, and an industrial design covering the physical device it runs on.
What does a trademark actually protect?
A trademark protects your business's identity in the marketplace: the name, logo, or slogan customers associate with you. In Canada, you get some trademark rights automatically just by using a mark in commerce, but those unregistered rights are limited to the specific geographic area where you've actually built a reputation. Registration gives you exclusive rights across all of Canada, a public record that discourages competitors from adopting something confusingly similar, and a much stronger legal position if you ever need to enforce your rights.
How much does it cost to register a trademark in Canada?
As of the 2026 fee schedule, the government filing fee through the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) is $491.06 for the first class of goods or services, plus $149.04 for each additional class. Trademark applications are filed and classified according to the specific goods and services they cover, so broader coverage across more classes costs more. These government fees are scheduled to rise a further 1.7% on January 1, 2027.
How long does trademark registration take?
Timelines vary with CIPO's examination backlog, but the current standard is roughly 14 months to first examination action (down from an 18-month standard that applied through early 2026). That's the wait before an examiner even looks at your file; opposition periods and any back-and-forth over objections can add meaningfully more time before registration is complete.
Do you need to register your trademark?
Not legally. You can operate and even enforce limited rights on an unregistered mark. But relying on unregistered "common law" trademark rights is a real gamble: your protection is confined to where you've actually used the mark, it's harder and more expensive to prove and enforce, and nothing stops a competitor from registering a similar mark first and forcing you to either rebrand or fight an expensive dispute. For any business planning to grow beyond its immediate local market, registration is the difference between owning your brand name and merely hoping nobody takes it.
What does a patent actually protect?
A patent protects a new invention by giving you the exclusive right to make, use, and sell it in Canada for a fixed term. In exchange, the invention becomes public knowledge once the patent is granted. Unlike a trademark, a patent has nothing to do with branding; it protects the underlying idea or mechanism itself, regardless of what you call it.
What has to be true for an invention to be patentable?
Three things, all at once: the invention must be new (not previously disclosed anywhere, including by you, more than a year before filing), useful (it has to actually work and do something), and non-obvious (a meaningful inventive step beyond what a skilled person in the field would already know to do). Publicly disclosing your invention (including at a trade show or in a sales pitch) before filing can permanently disqualify it in most other countries, and starts a strict one-year clock even in Canada.
How much does a patent cost, and how long does it take?
The 2026 CIPO filing fee is $595.06 at the standard rate, or $241.24 for a qualifying small entity. Filing is only the first step. You then have up to 4 years from your filing date to formally request examination, with its own separate fee, or the application is eventually deemed abandoned. A granted Canadian patent lasts 20 years from the filing date, provided maintenance fees are kept current throughout. Patent prosecution (the back-and-forth with an examiner over what you can actually claim) routinely takes several years from filing to grant, well beyond a trademark's timeline.
What about copyright and industrial design?
Copyright protects original creative works (writing, code, images, music) and in Canada it exists automatically the moment the work is created; there's no requirement to register it, though a certificate of registration can still be useful evidence in a dispute. Under recent amendments, copyright now lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. Industrial design is the one people most often confuse with a patent: it protects how a manufactured product looks (its shape, pattern, or ornamentation), not how it works, and lasts for the longer of 10 years from registration or 15 years from filing.
When you actually need a lawyer for trademark or patent work
We'll be straightforward about this. Filing a trademark application for a straightforward, clearly distinctive business name is something a well-prepared business owner can attempt directly through CIPO. Where legal advice becomes genuinely valuable is a proper clearance search before you commit to a name (to avoid discovering a conflict after you've already built a brand around it), responding to an examiner's objection, or defending your mark against an opposition. Patents are a different level of complexity entirely: drafting claims that are both defensible and commercially useful is a specialized skill, and a poorly drafted patent application can permanently limit what you're able to protect. If real money or a core piece of your business rides on the outcome, that's exactly when the cost of advice is smallest relative to what's at stake.
Cost and timeline summary
Government filing fees are fixed and published by CIPO, but they're only part of the real cost: a clearance search, professional drafting, and responding to examiner objections all add legal or agent fees on top, and the total varies by complexity. Trademark registration in Canada currently takes roughly 14 months or more to first action; patent prosecution typically runs several years from filing to grant. Neither process moves quickly, which is exactly why starting early (ideally before you've publicly launched a name or invention) matters more than almost anything else you can do to protect it.
Our intellectual property lawyers in Surrey, BC handle trademark clearance searches, applications, and prosecution for businesses across the Lower Mainland, alongside the broader business and commercial work that often goes hand in hand with a new brand or product launch. Book a free consultation before you commit to a name or file anything with CIPO.