How to File a Patent in Canada: 7 Essential Steps

You have protection at home, or a PCT application is ticking toward a deadline, and the next market on the list is Canada. The practical question is narrow: what does the process actually look like, and where are the traps? Knowing how to file a patent in Canada comes down to three things — choosing the right route in, requesting examination before the clock runs out, and clearing the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s formalities. Settle one point up front: Canada is not a member of the European Patent Convention, so you cannot reach it by validating a European patent. It needs its own national filing. Here is the sequence, with the dates that cost applicants their rights when they slip.

How to File a Patent in Canada: The Three Routes In

There are three ways in, and the right one depends on where you already sit in the process. Because Canada is outside the European patent system, there is no shortcut through a European grant — the application is filed directly with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), the national authority under the Patent Act and Patent Rules.

1. Direct national filing. File a Canadian application straight with CIPO. This makes sense when Canada is your first or only target.
2. Paris Convention route. If you filed somewhere else first, you have 12 months from that earliest priority date to file in Canada and claim priority back to it.
3. PCT national phase. If you filed an international (PCT) application, you enter the Canadian national phase from that single international filing — the route most overseas applicants use because it buys the most time.

Whichever route you pick, the end product is the same: a Canadian patent application examined on the merits. Canada runs a first-to-file system, so the earliest effective filing date wins — do not sit on an invention while a competitor races you to CIPO.

Request Examination Within Four Years — It Is Not Automatic

This is the step foreign applicants miss most often. Filing an application in Canada does not put it in the examination queue. You must file a separate request for examination and pay the examination fee, and if you do not, the application is simply deemed abandoned.

For applications with a filing date on or after 30 October 2019, the deadline to request examination is four years from the filing date — reduced from the old five-year window. CIPO will not examine, and will not warn you into action, until you ask. Diarise the four-year date the day you file and treat it as immovable.

Once examination begins, expect office actions on novelty, obviousness and subject-matter eligibility much as you would in any major jurisdiction. Canada also applies an “excess claims” fee and request-for-continued-examination mechanics introduced with the modern Rules, so keep claim counts disciplined to control cost.

The 30-Month PCT National Phase Deadline — and the 42-Month Trap

If you are coming through the PCT, this is the single most important number in the article. The Canadian national phase opens and must be entered by 30 months from the earliest priority date. Enter on time and the path is clean.

Canada does allow late entry up to 42 months, but that door narrowed. For international applications with a PCT filing date on or after 30 October 2019, late entry is no longer available as of right — you must state that the failure to meet the 30-month deadline was unintentional, pay the reinstatement fee, and CIPO has discretion to accept or refuse the declaration. Treat 30 months as the real deadline and 42 months as an emergency measure you never want to rely on.

Documents can be filed in English or French; a translation is required where the international application was published in another language. The national-phase entry fee and any outstanding maintenance fees are due at entry.

What It Costs: CIPO Fees and the Small-Entity Discount

CIPO’s government fees are modest by international standards, but they stack: a filing fee, an examination request fee, excess-claim fees, annual maintenance fees and a final fee on allowance. Professional fees for drafting and prosecution are the larger line item.

Canada offers a small-entity discount of 50% on many fees for applicants that qualify — broadly, entities with 100 or fewer employees, and universities, subject to conditions tied to who controls or has rights in the invention. The discount is valuable, but claiming it wrongly can jeopardise the patent, so confirm eligibility before you tick the box rather than after.

Maintenance fees are payable annually, starting on the second anniversary of the filing date, to keep the application and later the granted patent alive. Miss one and you enter a late-payment period; miss that and rights lapse. A docketing system is not optional here.

First-to-File, the Grace Period, and the 20-Year Term

Canada grants a patent for up to 20 years from the filing date, provided maintenance fees are paid. Because the system is first-to-file, the filing date is everything.

There is a safety net: Canada provides a 12-month grace period for disclosures of the invention that originated from the applicant or inventor. If you published or demonstrated the invention yourself, you still have one year to file in Canada without that disclosure counting against novelty. It does not rescue you from third-party disclosures, and it is not a substitute for filing first — but it has saved many inventors who spoke at a conference before calling an attorney.

If any of the invention was made in Canada, be mindful of the rules on filing abroad; export-control and foreign-filing considerations can apply, a topic worth reading up on in our guide to foreign filing licenses and export controls before you file outside the country.

Where Canadian Patents Are Enforced: The Federal Court

A patent is only as good as the forum that enforces it. In Canada the Federal Court has national jurisdiction over both validity and infringement, and its judgments run across the whole country — which is why most significant patent litigation and all impeachment (invalidity) actions are brought there.

Provincial superior courts can hear infringement claims too, but only infringement — they cannot declare a patent invalid with national effect. In practice that pushes serious disputes to the Federal Court, where a counterclaim for invalidity can be decided once, for the entire country. Factor the enforcement forum into strategy early, especially if Canada is a key revenue market rather than a defensive filing.

Why “Just Validate the European Patent” Does Not Work Here

It is worth repeating because the mistake is common and expensive. Canada is not an EPC state, so a granted European patent gives you nothing in Canada — there is no validation step that extends a European grant across the Atlantic. The same is true of the Unified Patent Court, which has no reach outside its participating EU members.

The comparison that actually helps is with other non-EPC markets you may be entering in parallel, such as filing a patent in Australia or entering the PCT national phase in Japan — each is its own national filing with its own deadlines. Canada belongs in that group. Plan a national or PCT national-phase filing, not a validation.

File Your Canadian Patent With Confidence

PerspireIP helps foreign applicants and in-house teams file and prosecute patents in Canada — from choosing the route and timing the examination request to docketing the maintenance fees and preparing for Federal Court enforcement. Explore our Canada services hub, our local support in Toronto and Montreal, or contact our team to map out your Canadian filing.

Frequently Asked Questions