On September 30, 2018, just hours before the midnight deadline,
Canada reached a new trilateral trade agreement with the United
States and Mexico. The new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement
(USMCA) will replace the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
currently in force. The full text of the USMCA can be found here.
Chapter 20 "Intellectual Property
Rights" of the USMCA replaces Chapter 17 of the NAFTA and
stipulates updated intellectual property(IP) provisions that Canada
must implement upon coming into force of the USMCA. On October 5,
2018, the Government of Canada published a summary of the IP Chapter.
Many of the updated IP provisions have already been incorporated
into Canada's recent amendments to the Patent Act
(expected to come into force in 2019), the Industrial Design
Act (coming into force on November 5, 2018) and the
Trademarks Act (expected to come into force in early
2019). However, Canada still needs to make further implementations,
most
