The term ‘marked for exam’ implies that a trademark application has been taken up for examination or is due to be examined shortly by the Trademark Office. The term “examination” per se means that the particular trademark would be examined to see if it satisfies and overcomes the objections enunciated in the Indian Trade Marks Act, 1999 (what we call “absolute and relative grounds” under Section 9 and 11), only after which it proceeds to advertisement and ultimately registration.

When a trademark application is filed, duly processed and digitized(please read our article here to know about data entry and digitization),it is then set aside to commence the first of the several stages in registration, namely “examination of the trademark.” Hence when the trademark is to be examined shortly, the Trademark Office would put up the status “marked for exam” in its online platform, after which the applicant can rest assured that examination of the trademark would shortly be conducted and a report generated.

As far as taking up a particular application for examination, there is no definite time frame adopted by the Trademark Office and in earlier days, it would take months together for an application to get examined. This length in period was further heightened by the fact that the task of examination was sometimes taken up solely by the Mumbai Trademark Office and at one point decentralized to be taken up by the other branches of the Indian Trademark Office as well. But at present, thankfully, the applications are getting examined quite swiftly.

As far as the status ‘marked for exam’ is concerned, there is no action necessary from the applicant and all the applicant has to do is wait and look out for the examination report which would be made available very soon following the said status. It is only after this that the actual task of the applicant begins!

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