The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has put online, in the section of the Trademarks Opposition Board (TMOB), a dedicated web page listing the proceedings in which requests for confidentiality orders or costs awards have been filed since 1 April 2025, together with any resulting rulings. The page bears a modification date of 1 October 2026 and states that it is updated quarterly. The background is the set of amendments to the Trademarks Act and Regulations that took effect in April 2025: since then the Registrar of Trademarks has had the authority to rule on requests for confidentiality orders and costs awards in opposition proceedings and section 45 expungement proceedings before the TMOB.
The page contains two tables showing, case by case, the type of proceeding, the file number, the trade mark, the ruling and the decision date; with the file number, readers can retrieve the documents of the case from CIPO's Trademarks Document Retrieval Service (TDRS).
On the page as it stands, the confidentiality table lists 31 proceedings: 18 granted, 10 denied, 2 not considered and 1 pending; the costs table lists 18 proceedings: 4 awarded, 11 refused, 2 pending and 1 not considered.
In practice this creates a searchable pool of practice references, but the threshold for both kinds of request is high. CIPO's practice notice states that confidentiality orders are exceptional because they involve a significant departure from the open court principle.
Costs awards are limited to the circumstances listed in the Regulations, including the withdrawal of a hearing request less than 14 days before the hearing (2 times the relevant filing fee), unreasonable conduct causing undue delay or expense (5 times) and, in opposition proceedings, an application refused because it was filed in bad faith (10 times the fee for filing a statement of opposition).
J&C recommends that rights holders and representatives with opposition or section 45 cases in Canada add this page to their checks: before filing sensitive evidence such as sales data or customer lists, compare the granted and denied confidentiality cases to assess whether a request can succeed, and make it before the evidence is filed; when assessing the costs risk of delay or of a late withdrawal of a hearing request, look at the awarded and refused cases; and note that the tables show outcomes only, so the reasons must be read in the rulings retrieved from TDRS.
Source: ised-isde.canada.ca | ised-isde.canada.ca | ised-isde.canada.ca
