"Place Of Origin" As A Trademark In Canada

The Canadian trademarks office has released a Practice Notice in order to clarify current practice with respect to applying the descriptiveness analysis to geographical names.

In our earlier post on this topic (Trademark Series: Can a Geographical Name be a Trademark?), we noted that a geographical name can  be registrable as a trademark in Canada. The issue is whether the term is "clearly descriptive or deceptively misdescriptive" in the English or French languages of the place of origin of the goods or services.

The Practice Notice tells us that a trademark will be considered a "geographic name" if the examiner's research shows "that the trademark has no meaning other than as a geographic name." It's unclear what this research would consist of. (A search in Google Maps? An atlas?)