Claiming Colour In Canadian Trade-Mark Applications

Over the past decade or so, both Canadian courts and the Canadian Trade-marks Office have struggled with appropriate wording in a trade-mark application, where the mark consists of one or more colours as applied to an object. That having been said, both the courts and the Trade-marks Office have agreed that colour, per se, is not registrable. In other words, the colour(s) must be limited to an object of a particular shape as shown in the trade-mark application.

In Canada, trade-mark applications are only published in black and white. Accordingly, it is necessary to describe the colours or else it is necessary to line the drawing in the application for colour. The Canadian Trade-marks Regulations depict appropriate lining for a number of the most common colours. For example, vertical lines represent the colour red; solid, horizontal lines represent the colour blue, etc. However, many Canadian practitioners prefer to simply describe the colour, instead of lining for