As sad as it is to see the end of Canada's oldest retailer,
it's nice to know that the Hudson Bay Company's huge
portfolio of trademarks, including BAY DAYS and those iconic
stripes, is staying in Canada. Many of those trademarks have become
more than just trade source indicators. They've become part of
the Canadian identity. But the new owner of the portfolio, Canadian
Tire, will need to do more with those trademarks than just own
them. It will also need to use them and it will need to start doing
so soon.
To maintain rights in a registered trademark in Canada, the
owner of the trademark or a licensee needs to use it in the way
that "use" is defined in the Trademarks Act.
This "use or lose it" principle,
which we've written about before, is foundational to
trademark law. You can't just hoard trademarks and wait to sue
others for using them in the way you can with patents. If a
trademark owner can't prove, when challenged to do so, that its
registered trademark has
