Licensing A Trademark

Edited by Chantal Saunders and Beverley Moore

Under Canadian law charities and non-for-profit organizations can own trade-marks which may or may not be registered with the Canadian Trade-marks Office and can license use of those marks to others.

Under licensed use, the owner of the trade-mark is known as the "licensor".  The person or party licensed to use a trade-mark is known as a "licensee" or "permitted user". 

While a trade-mark license can, in Canada, be oral, this is not recommended.  

Written licenses allow clarity as to which mark is under license, for what goods or services, the duration of the license, and the quality control provisions that govern the use of the trade-mark by the licensee.   These are the minimum requirements of a trade-mark license and must be present even if the licensor and the licensee have some type of shared governance structure.  For example, a national charity may wish to license its provincial organizations to