What Is a Trademark Examination Report?

A trademark examination report is the written notice a Trade Marks Registry examiner issues when they find a legal obstacle to registering your mark. It is not a rejection — it's an invitation to respond to specific objections within a set deadline, and a large share of examination reports are successfully overcome with a properly drafted reply.

Who issues it, and when

After you file Form TM-A, an examiner at the Trade Marks Registry reviews the application — usually within a few months of filing — and checks it against the grounds set out in the Trade Marks Act, 1999. If the mark clears examination without issue, it moves straight to journal publication. If not, the examiner issues an examination report setting out exactly which grounds are being raised.

The two categories of grounds

Absolute grounds (Section 9): the mark itself is the problem — it's non-distinctive, purely descriptive of the goods/services, generic, or otherwise not capable of functioning as a trademark.
Relative grounds (Section 11): the mark conflicts with an earlier registered or pending mark that's identical or deceptively similar, in the same or related class.

An examination report can cite one ground or both, and it may cite several conflicting prior marks at once.

How long you have to respond

The standard deadline to file a written response is 30 days from the date the report is issued, with the possibility of a short extension in limited circumstances. This is a hard statutory deadline, not a soft target — miss it, and the application is treated as abandoned, meaning you lose the filing date and would need to start over from scratch, including paying the government fee again.

What a response actually needs to do

A response has to address the specific grounds cited — not just restate that you'd like the mark registered. That typically means distinguishing your mark from any cited prior marks (on the goods/services, the visual/phonetic similarity, or the relevant consumer base), and/or making the legal case for distinctiveness if the objection is on absolute grounds. If the written response doesn't resolve the objection, the application is listed for a show-cause hearing, where the case is argued in person before the Registrar. For a deeper breakdown of the specific grounds examiners raise and how to respond to each, see our complete guide to examination reports and objections.