Trademarks Act

Marginal note:Use of trademark by related companies

• 51 (1) Where a company and the owner of a trademark that is used in Canada by that owner in association with a pharmaceutical preparation are related companies, the use by the company of the trademark, or a trademark confusing therewith, in association with a pharmaceutical preparation that at the time of that use or at any time thereafter,

  • (a) is acquired by a person directly or indirectly from the company, and

  • (b) is sold, distributed or advertised for sale in Canada in a package bearing the name of the company and the name of that person as the distributor thereof,

  has the same effect, for all purposes of this Act, as a use of the trademark or the confusing trademark, as the case may be, by that owner.

• Marginal note:Where difference in composition

  (2) Subsection (1) does not apply to any use of a trademark or a confusing trademark by a company referred to in that subsection in association with a pharmaceutical preparation after such time, if any, as that pharmaceutical preparation is declared by the Minister of Health, by notice published in the Canada Gazette, to be sufficiently different in its composition from the pharmaceutical preparation in association with which the trademark is used in Canada by the owner referred to in subsection (1) as to be likely to result in a hazard to health.

• Definition of pharmaceutical preparation

  (3) In this section, pharmaceutical preparation includes

  • (a) any substance or mixture of substances manufactured, sold or represented for use in

    • (i) the diagnosis, treatment, mitigation or prevention of a disease, disorder or abnormal physical state, or the symptoms thereof, in humans or animals, or

    • (ii) restoring, correcting or modifying organic functions in humans or animals, and

  • (b) any substance to be used in the preparation or production of any substance or mixture of substances described in paragraph (a),

  but does not include any such substance or mixture of substances that is the same or substantially the same as a substance or mixture of substances that is a proprietary medicine within the meaning from time to time assigned to that expression by regulations made pursuant to the Food and Drugs Act.