What Does It Cost to Register a Trademark in Canada?

Registering a trademark in Canada normally entails up to three types of costs: official fees, professional fees, and taxes.

Official Fees

Official fees are the fees payable to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office. There is a trademark application filing fee of $478.15 CAD in 2025 for the first class of goods and services in your Canadian trademark application. For each class of goods and services beyond the first, there is a further cost of $145.12 CAD in 2025 per class payable when filing your application.

Class headings describe, in very broad terms, the nature of goods or services contained in each class. Class 18, for example, includes mainly leather, imitations of leather and certain goods made of those materials, but importantly, this class does not include clothing, footwear, and headwear made from leather worn by people.

As navigating classes requires careful consideration to avoid misclassifying goods and services in your application, it is always best to consult an expert in this field.

It should be noted that a trademark registration covering a larger number of classes, or areas of commerce, will entail higher official fees at filing. It is also likely to have higher professional fees from application to registration but will also have a broader scope of exclusive rights and is a trademark registration of greater value.

This is analogous to the cost to build a 4000 square foot house being more than the cost to build a 2000 square foot house, all else being equal. There is just more time (professional fees) and materials (official fees) involved in building a bigger asset, which will ultimately be worth more.

Professional Fees

Professional fees are those fees payable to your registered trademark agent, who is often also a trademark lawyer, for their professional services helping you with registering your trademark. There are professional fees to prepare and file your trademark application, as well as fees during the trademark examination phase (sometimes referred to as trademark prosecution), and the approval, advertisement, allowance and registration phases.

Most of the professional fees are incurred while preparing your trademark application for filing and during the trademark examination phase. Our professional fees associated with the application phase (billed as a single professional fee) includes discussions regarding your trademark vision, drafting a statement of goods and services to adequately suit your business needs, ensuring proper Nice classification, and preparing and filing your trademark application irrespective of the number of classes.

TThe professional fees incurred in the trademark examination phase will depend on the number of examiner’s reports you have to respond to, and the nature and complexity of the objections made by the trademark examiner in his or her report. If you are seeking to maximize the scope of protection granted by your registration with a high number of goods and services crossing many trademark classes, you are more likely to face more examination requirements than an application with fewer classes of goods and services.

Further considerations affecting the cost of obtaining a trademark are whether the mark is descriptive or inherently distinctive and whether it is confusingly similar to other trademarks registered in overlapping areas of commerce, will increase the number of objections you have to respond to.

If a third party opposes your approved trademark application during the advertisement period, a trademark opposition proceeding commences. While relatively rare (about 4% of applications are opposed), trademark oppositions are quasi-judicial proceedings which can entail significant costs in the tens (and occasionally hundreds) of thousands of dollars if fully fought out between the parties A successful trademark opposition proceeding will secure the allowance of your trademark application. If you choose not to defend a trademark opposition, this will lead to your trademark application being deemed abandoned (but will not incur additional costs).

As an opposition by a third party will well exceed any initial budget you had set for registering your trademark, a trademark search and opinion from a trademark lawyer or registered trademark agent can be obtained to assess the risk of conflict in adopting and using a trademark in Canada. This is a valuable way to manage and reduce your risk of facing a trademark opposition during the trademark application process. To learn more, visit our resource on conducting a trademark search in Canada.

Taxes

Professional fees are taxable in Canada such that HST or GST is payable based on the rate in the province or territory in which you, as the client, operates your business. It does not matter if the law firm providing the service to your business is in a different province.

If you are required to collect and remit sales taxes to the Canada Revenue Agency, the sales tax Canadian businesses pay on professional services is offset against the sales tax you collect when selling your goods and services. Thus, sales tax may not be considered a business expense, but sales taxes paid could impact your fluid cash position if you are a pre-revenue business filing your first trademark application in Canada.

There is no tax on official fees paid to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.

If your business is located outside of Canada, there is no tax on professional fees.

Just Tell Me the All-In Cost Already

Most trademarks can be registered in Canada for somewhere between $2000-$4000 CAD (exclusive of tax) spread out over a period of two or more years.

Like with many types of services, you get what you pay for with professional service firms.

Low-cost options are nearly always low service and/or low expertise options, which can lead to undesirable outcomes and negatively impact the value of your business, such as:

• refused applications
• defective registrations; and
• trademark rights of lesser or little value.

Is Trademark Registration Worth the Money?

The enhanced trademark protection granted by registering your trademarks has been shown to raise the profitability of a business by 1.7% and the valuation of a business by 11.9%, so trademark registration is often money well spent.

Even small businesses between $100,000 to $2,000,000 in annual revenue will in most instances have valuations between one to ten times profits. Accordingly, once a business has $100,000 or more in annual profit, it is usually already making an over 100% return on their investment of registering their primary trademark (for the trade name of the business) in Canada. And unlike assets which depreciate, like computers, office furniture and automobiles, the value of a trademark registration almost always appreciates as a business grows.

If you are in the unfortunate position of needing to close or reorganize your business, your trademark may be a source of value. The value of your trademark is tied to the goodwill and reputation that you have built up in your brand. New opportunities to diversify your revenue may arise from leveraging the positive association consumers have with your brand, like for example, collaborating with another company on a particular project.

Obtaining a registration grants the trademark owner the right to exclusive use of the trademark for the goods and services with which it is associated throughout Canada. A trademark registration grants you exclusive federal rights to that mark and a presumption of the validity of that registration, requiring a competitor to furnish evidence to prove otherwise.

In contrast, the rights granted to unregistered marks are limited to their geographical location and their rights are enforceable only if it is proven to a court with evidence that the unregistered trademark has sufficient reputation with relevant consumers in that geographical location. Evidence of sufficient reputation is demonstrated in several ways, including, but not limited to, documentary evidence of sales and advertising figures marketing documents, and expert surveys, all proving consumers associate your unregistered mark with the goods and services you provide.

If you would like to learn more about how to get a trademark registration in Canada (or the United States), contact us now for a complimentary and confidential initial telephone appointment with a member of our team.