WEBSITE PRIVACY STATEMENT
The College of Patent Agents and Trademark Agents (“the College”), as an independent professional regulatory body, respects the privacy of its website visitors. The College has a legal duty to protect your personal information, in compliance with the Privacy Act, the College of Patent Agents and Trademark Agents Act (CPATA Act), and other applicable legislation.
This privacy statement describes the College’s practices for protecting the privacy of the personal information it collects from visitors to the College’s website and social media pages. This statement describes ways the College collects, uses, discloses, and manages personal information. It is not intended to describe every situation in which the College collects personal information. Other than as permitted or required by law, the purposes for the collection, use or disclosure of personal information will be set out at the time of collection.
If you are a patent agent or patent agent-in-training, or a trademark agent or trademark agent-in-training, you can view our privacy statement for Agents here, to find out how we collect, use, disclose, retain and protect your personal information controlled by the College.
For more information, consult our Privacy Policy
Your Information, Your Choice
You have choices about how you interact with the College. If you do not provide us with your personal information, you may not receive the requested service or activity from the College.
By using this website, you accept this privacy statement. You also accept the College’s use of website analytics as described in this statement.
COLLECTION
Personal Information
The term “personal information” means recorded information about an identifiable individual. The personal information we collect through this website, and our social media sites, includes:
- Name and contact information if you send us a question or comments;
- Your IP address;
- Information you provide to us when you interact with our social media pages; and
- Additional personal information if you apply for employment with the College.
The College collects personal information about you only if it is necessary for the College to meet its statutory purposes and its Regulatory Objective. Our authority to collect personal information is derived from the Privacy Act and the CPATA Act, Regulations, and our enabling bylaws and policies.
Except for IP addresses via Web analytics, the College does not gather any personal information from you during your visit to our websites. When we ask you for your personal information, we will provide a privacy notice describing the purpose for collecting personal information, our authority to do so, and how you may ask questions.
Communicating With Us
When you contact the College with a comment, question, or complaint, you may be asked for contact information that identifies you (including your name and your preferred method of contact, either email address or phone number) and the information needed to help us answer your question or respond to your comment or complaint.
Social Networks
The College may use accounts on social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others to engage with the public.
The College’s social media accounts are publicly accessible, and your posts, comments, and replies to, and mentions of, the College may be publicly visible, depending on your privacy settings. Your privacy and the retention of information on social media accounts are governed by the privacy policies of the parties that operate these social networks. Some social networks may allow you to control the information you make available to the College. Users should review and agree to privacy policies and the terms and conditions of the parties that operate these networks prior to participating. The College has no responsibility or liability for the way the organizations that operate such linked platforms collect, use, disclose, secure and otherwise treat your personal information.
The College may collect and measure information available to us about social media activity to provide content that is relevant and potentially interesting to users of these social media platforms. We do not collect personal information during this process.
Hiring
Your personal information, such as your name, email address, and employment history, is collected when you apply for a job with the College to contact you, assess your eligibility for employment, and determine your suitability for the job to which you have applied. A standard criminal background check conducted by the RCMP National Repository of Criminal Records or local police may be part of the hiring process. If an applicant is found to have a criminal record, the nature of the offense(s) will be provided to the College by the RCMP so that we may assess the impact this record may have on suitability for employment with the College.
College Newsletter
If you sign-up to receive the College’s newsletter, you will be required to provide us with your email address.
USE AND DISCLOSURE
We will only use or disclose your personal information for the same purpose or purposes as we collect it, or for a consistent purpose, unless the Privacy Act, CPATA Act or another law specifically authorizes the use of your personal information for a different purpose, or unless we obtain your consent to use your personal information for another purpose that we have identified to you.
Use
The College uses personal information:
- For the purposes we collect the information or purposes consistent with them;
- To comply with legal and regulatory requirements;
- For website analytics (limited to the IP address, which may be considered personal information in some circumstances);
- To send email communications related to College practices if you signed up for the newsletter (i.e. announcements related to Board member changes); and
- For other purposes if we have your consent.
Data collected on our website may be processed and stored by service providers outside of Canada, specifically MailChimp and Google Analytics. Personal information that travels outside of Canada may be subject to different laws.
Disclosure
The College may disclose personal information of the public, licensees, our employees or to a third party if it is permitted or required by law, for the purpose of complying with a subpoena, warrant or court order, or to collect debt from or make a payment to an individual. In all cases, we disclose only the minimum amount of personal information for the legally permitted or required purpose.
IMPROVING OUR WEBSITE
Personal information, such as your name, phone number or email address, is not automatically gathered from you when visiting our website. The College only collects this information if you supply it to us voluntarily as described above.
The information we gather from you automatically is described in this part of our privacy statement.
Web Server Logs
When you access the website, our servers collect certain information about your internet connection and your browsing experience in their logs. This includes the IP address of your internet connection and information about what you access on the website. IP addresses are unique numbers assigned by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to all devices used to access the Internet. The IP address, on its own, does not typically identify an individual. It can, however, identify an individual in certain circumstances, such as with the co-operation of an ISP for example. For this reason, it is considered personal information under the Privacy Act.
We use this information only to manage our websites. We do not attempt to use this information to identify individuals visiting the website, unless we detect an attempt to damage or violate the site, or if a law enforcement investigation requires it. We protect and restrict access to this information.
Website Analytics
The College uses Google Analytics, a service provided by Google Inc. to improve our website. Google Analytics uses cookies to generate statistical information about visits to our website. This information is sent to Google in the United States from your computer when you visit the College web pages. Google collects this information on behalf of the College and compiles statistical reports for our use. The College uses this data to determine opportunities for improvement (for example, understanding webpages visited provides the College with valuable information for improving the content and functionality on certain pages). The use of Google Analytics does not allow the College to identify specific individuals.
The information sent to Google includes:
- the originating Internet Protocol (IP) address (anonymized);
- the country, province and city associated with the IP address;
- the date and time of the request;
- the type of browser and device used;
- the page(s) visited; and
- websites that referred you to the digital service.
To further protect personal information of visitors to our website, the College uses a feature from each service provider that hides part or all of the IP address of a visitor, thus anonymizing it, before it is stored.
The College website uses data internally and retains information collected from Web analytics for a maximum of 18 months. After this period, the information must be disposed of in accordance with the Standard of Privacy and Web Analytics or as authorized by the Librarian and Archivist of Canada.
For more information on how your privacy is safeguarded in relation to Web analytics, see the Standard on Privacy and Web Analytics.
You can opt-out of Google Analytics by changing your browser settings to refuse cookies or disable JavaScript so that your visit will not be tracked, and thus no information will be collected by the College. If you use the opt-out cookie from the Google browser add-ons, your site visit will not be affected.
For more information on Google’s privacy policy, refer to the Google Analytics Privacy Overview.
Third-Party Links
The College website contain links to other sites that the College does not own or operate. We will not provide any of your personal information to these third parties without your consent. We provide links to third party websites as a convenience to the user.
Protection of Personal Information
The College maintains your personal information through electronic files. Recognizing that your privacy is important, the College employs technical, administrative and physical security measures to protect your personal information. However, no transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be completely secure since “perfect security” does not exist on the Internet. Consequently, the College does not represent, warrant, covenant or guarantee the complete security of the personal information you provide to the College using the internet
CHANGES TO THIS STATEMENT
Changes to this Privacy Statement may occur if we make corresponding changes to our management of this website, to the services we offer, to the personal information we collect, or to our practices for handling your personal information. We will inform you of significant changes via this website.
PRIVACY INQUIRY
Any questions, comments, or concerns you may have regarding the administration of the Privacy Act and privacy policies regarding this website may be directed to the College Privacy Officer by email, by telephone or in writing to:
College of Patent Agent and Trademark Agents
Attention: Privacy Officer
400-411 Roosevelt Avenue
Ottawa, ON
K2A 3X9
Email: priv@cpata-cabamc.ca
If you are not satisfied with our response to your privacy concern, you may also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner by email at info@priv.gc.ca or by telephone at 1-800-282-1376.