A trademark for Fi has been filed by Google in the Canadian Intellectual Property Office — don’t get excited yet though.
Google Fi is the Mountain View, California-based company’s MVNO telecommunication platform that offers cellular service. The platform operates on networks owned by U.S. carriers like Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Celluar and Three.
Google first launched Fi back in April of 2015 exclusively for its Nexus 6 smartphone. Support for additional devices like the Pixel and Pixel XL was eventually added in 2016, followed by a rebrand from ‘Project Fi’ to ‘Google Fi’ in 2018.
In the U.S. a subscription to Fi is priced at $20 USD per month for unlimited calling and messaging. Additionally, users pay for each megabyte of data up to a maximum of 6GB (about $60 USD), with free data beyond that.
It’s possible, though unlikely, that Google could have reached an agreement with a major Canadian carrier like Bell, Telus or Rogers regarding Fi’s launch in Canada.
The trademark for Google Fi was filed on January 24th, 2019 and is listed as a ‘Word Mark.’ The Statement description regarding ‘Goods’ reads as follows:
“Software for the transmission of voice, data, image, and audio; network management software, software for billing analysis; software for accessing a global computer network and interactive computer communications network.’
Concerning ‘services’ the trademark filing says the following:
‘Telecommunication services, namely, transmission of voice, data, images, audio, video via telephone and global communication networks; providing access to a global communication network; voice mail services; text messaging services”
As with every trademark filing, this doesn’t necessarily mean Fi is coming to Canada. Google filing a Fi related trademark in Canada could be the tech giant just protecting its intellectual property.
Along with filing a Fi, Google also recently filed a trademark for Duplex in Canada, the company’s extension of Google Assistant that is capable of carrying natural conversations. The trademark for Duplex was filed on January 28th.
Update 02/09/2019: Corrected the explanation of Fi’s data plans to more accurately reflect how users pay for data.
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