On January 17, 2020, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) published a Practice Notice entitled Extensions of time in Examination and to respond to a section 44.1 notice, announcing that for all examiner’s reports issued on or after this date, CIPO will generally not grant an extension to time to respond unless the applicant is able to demonstrate exceptional circumstances exist that justify the delay in responding.
This marks a change from the previous policy, under which CIPO would generally grant an applicant one six month extension of time to respond to an examiner’s report on request. Under this previous policy, an applicant was only required to demonstrate exceptional circumstances when seeking a further extension of time beyond one year from the date of the examiner’s report.
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