Before you spend time and money filing an application for an industrial design, you may wish to conduct a preliminary search to see what other industrial designs exist. Although no search is exhaustive, a preliminary search will help you determine whether your industrial design is likely to be original. If your design is similar to someone else’s registered design, you should be concerned about your possible infringement of their registered design. Also, if your design is not original, you will not be able to register it.

How to conduct a search

Conducting a search is a very complicated and technical process, and conducting an accurate and thorough search can be very difficult. The searcher will have to check for various possible versions of your design.  Searches can be done in two ways. The first way to conduct a search is by accessing the Industrial Design Office’s Canadian Industrial Designs Database. There is no charge for this search. A search can also be done in person at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s Client Service Centre.

Searches done by accessing the database are particularly useful when you know detailed information about a product similar to yours that you are conducting a search for, such as the product classification code, classification text, client reference number, court order number, name of current owner, and date of registration.

If you decide to do a search in person, Intellectual Property Information Officers, while not able to perform the search for you, are available to help you with your search.

For more information about industrial designs, refer to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.

For legal help with an industrial design search and to determine if your design can be registered, or for other intellectual property matters, contact our preferred lawyers and see who’s right for you: 

								
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