by Dev User | Feb 22, 2018 | Uncategorized
Feb 2018 Charity & NFP Law Update
CRA Reminder to Update Donation Tax Receipt URLs
A recent update on the Canada Revenue Agency’s (“CRA”) Twitter account on February 15, 2018, reminded qualified donees to update their official donation receipts with the CRA’s new website URL. In accordance with section 3501(1)(j) of the Income Tax Regulations, official donation receipts must include the name and website of the CRA. According to the CRA’s “What information must be on an official donation receipt from a registered charity?” webpage, charities and qualified donees will have until March 31, 2019 to update their receipts from the current www.cra-arc.gc.ca URL to the CRA’s new www.canada.ca/charities-giving URL.
P113 – Gifts and Income Tax 2017 Updated to Include Ecological Gifts
On January 3, 2018, the CRA updated the P113 – Gifts and Income Tax 2017 (the “Pamphlet”) to reflect changes to the ecological gifts program introduced in the 2017 Federal Budget. The Pamphlet assists individuals who donate money or property, including gifts of ecologically sensitive land, to a registered charity or other qualified donee and is updated every year. The changes to ecological gifts, as reflected in the Pamphlet, include changes to the approval of recipients, private foundations and personal servitudes, along with new rules for unauthorized changes of use and dispositions of property as of March 21, 2017, and are discussed in greater detail in Charity & NFP Law Bulletin No. 399.
Read the February 2018 Charity & NFP Law Update
by Dev User | Feb 22, 2018 | Uncategorized
Feb 2018 Charity & NFP Law Update
Similar to laws in other countries, Canada’s trademark regime prohibits the registration of trademarks that would offend the public. According to the Trade-marks Act, no mark that is “scandalous, obscene or immoral” can be adopted as a trademark. What constitutes a “scandalous, obscene or immoral” trademark is a subjective decision that is made by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (“CIPO”) with very little interpretation of this provision by Canadian courts. CIPO’s Trademarks Examination Manual states the following on the subject:
- A scandalous word or design is one which is offensive to the public or individual sense of propriety or morality, or is a slur on nationality and is generally regarded as offensive. It is generally defined as causing general outrage or indignation.
- A word is obscene if marked by violations of accepted language inhibitions or regarded as taboo in polite usage. This word is generally defined as something that is offensive or disgusting by accepted standards of morality or decency; or offensive to the senses.
- A word or design is immoral when it is in conflict with generally or traditionally held moral principles, and generally defined as not conforming to accepted standard of morality.
Despite this prohibition, the Cleveland Indians Baseball Company, LLC is the owner of four trademark registrations in Canada, some of which were recently the subject of an application before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (“HRTO”). This means that they avoided the prohibition to the registration of trademarks that are “scandalous, obscene, or immortal” when they were registered in 1988 and 2012.
However in 2016, Anishnaabe elder Douglas Cardinal (“Cardinal”) commenced an HRTO application alleging that Major League Baseball (“MLB”) discriminated against him in contravention of Canadian human rights laws. More specifically, he sought an order enjoining the MLB and the Cleveland Indians Baseball Company, LLC from displaying, broadcasting, communicating or otherwise disseminating within Ontario images, etc., using the word “Indian” or any form of that name and the Cleveland Indians Baseball Company’s “Chief Wahoo” logo.
At the HRTO, the MLB argued that the issue at hand was not a human rights dispute, but rather a trademark dispute that should be heard by the Federal Court. Essentially, the lawyers for the MLB were arguing that the case should not be heard on jurisdictional grounds. However, the HRTO agreed to hear the case despite the objections of MLB’s lawyers and paved the way to challenge the legitimacy of the use of offensive trademarks thereby dismissing arguments from the MLB that having a registered trademark in Canada grants the owner a right to use the mark without limitation or restriction. MLB sought a judicial review of the tribunal decision.
In that regard, on January 30, 2018, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice released its decision in Major League Baseball v Cardinal. With regard to the MLB’s jurisdictional argument, the court held that although trademarks fall under the Federal Court’s jurisdiction, the Federal Court does not have jurisdiction over Cardinal’s discrimination claim contrary to Canada’s human rights laws. The court was not persuaded that the application posed a true question of jurisdiction and dismissed the application for judicial review.
Although this case turns on issues of jurisdiction, it is a good warning to charities and not-for-profits that the legal appetite is changing for trademarks that may have been traditionally accepted in the past. To avoid such potential issues, charities and not-for-profits should carefully reconsider their branding to ensure that they are not using marks, registered or unregistered, that at one time may have been acceptable but are now offensive or may be considered discriminatory, in accordance with provincial human rights legislation.
Read the February 2018 Charity & NFP Law Update
