On this past Friday, October 5, Toronto and the Royal Canadian Mint made news because the Canadian Mint claimed they owned the words “one cent” and you can’t use them. The city of Toronto has started a campaign to get the federal government to return one cent of the national Goods and Services Tax (GST) to Toronto, which is struggling from decades of federal cuts in their budget payments from the Federal government. Source: boingboing

Now the Federal corporation that mints Canada’s currency has sent Toronto a bill for more than $47,000 for the use of the words “one cent” and the image of the Canadian penny on the campaign materials, which include bus shelter ads, pamphlets, billboards, bumper stickers and other visible advertising space. Included in the $47,000 bill is $10,000 for the use of the words "one cent" in the campaign website and email address and an additional $10,000 for the use of the words "one cent" in the campaign phone number (416-ONECENT). The rest of the $27,680 has been charged against the City for the use of the image of the Canadian penny in printed promotional item such as bumper stickers and posters. The Mint has come to this amount by taking the total number of materials printed divided by the approximate population of Toronto, and then using a percentage of that number to arrive at a dollar figure.) Source: TMCnet Communications

There is considerable speculation that this move by the Feds is a political one. The current Federal government in Canada is a Conservative one and Toronto is considered a “lefty” sort of city. The Toronto Star came out in an editorial calling the Mint foolish.

OneCentNow is the brainchild of Toronto Mayor David Milner:

The One Cent NOW! campaign requests the federal government to share one cent of the existing GST with cities to ensure that infrastructure and important services are maintained and that future infrastructure is built in an environmentally friendly manner. Cities are the engines of the Canadian economy and contribute billions to the federal government each year. As the federal government has indicated that there is room to cut the GST, we believe there is room to share one cent to support the critical needs of Canada’s largest cities.

They also have an online petition and are encouraging people to write to their Federal representatives or Member of Parliament, supporting the initiative.

No one is disputing that the Canadian Mint does indeed own the trademark to the image of the Canadian penny. By having a Trademark of the penny and all other Canadian currency, they discourage counterfeit money.

At dinner I was imagining a poor street waif asking passersby for at least “one cent” to “buy meself a hot meal”, only to have the Canadian mint come down and slap the kid with a lawsuit. However, Application number 0915680 is the trademark on the penny design, and refers to "1 cent Canada" rather than "one cent".

However, the Canadian mint does not own the rights to the words “one cent”. With the help of my husband, we discovered that according to a search of the CIPO Canadian Trade-Marks Database, "one cent" only shows up a malformed search of the back of the 1970s-era One Hundred Dollar Bill. Cent is also French for one hundred So, I'm not entirely sure where they get off claiming that one cent is trademarked. It isn't.

Perhaps the Federal government should suck on that mint for a while.