Sound Board

Our thoughts and views on the practice of Intellectual Property in India and around the world.

Yoga is one of the oldest physical and spiritual exercises known to mankind. It is collective knowledge and has been believed to be in existence from around 2500 B.C. Come to think of it, there should be no intellectual property battle over it – it is India’s traditional knowledge and no single entity or company should be allowed to monopolise any yoga asana or posture in the form of a patent or copyright, as the case may be. However, practically and legally, it isn’t this straight forward and…

This is a very simple and preliminary stage wherein the Trademark Office asserts that all the formalities required to be observed while filing a trademark application have successfully been observed by the applicant and the application would soon proceed to the next level. The formalities here might imply submission of appropriate information or documents like Power of Attorney. If the status shows “formality check fail,” it naturally implies that there is some deficiency in observing the…

The joint ownership of a trademark is possible within the Indian Legislative framework. However, it represents an unusual construct in that the very concept of a joint ownership is counter to the fundamental purpose of a trademark. A trademark usually serves as a designation of origin from a single entity or person. The usual policy is to have a jointly owned single entity owning the mark. When there is joint ownership of a trademark, however, joint owners of a trademark likely have to…

Up until now, after the 2013 amendment to the Trademarks Rules of 2003, we were required to follow “current edition” of the NICE classification of goods and services as published by WIPO which meant that we were following the tenth edition of NICE Classification this year. Recently, however, the Trademarks Registry published its list of classification of goods and services as required by Section 8 of the Trademarks Act, 1999.

My earlier post on how to register a trademark in India discussed the requirements and in brief the options you have to file an application for registration of a trademark in India. Over the last few weeks I have been receiving several emails and messages from entrepreneurs and start-ups enquiring about how the trademark registration process works in India and why even an IT major would find the Indian online trademark filing system complicated. Unfortunately I do not have an easy answer but I…

“What the hell are you doing?” was what I heard from my wife which jolted me, shook my phone and got the photo blurred. When I looked up, I realised that there were quite a few people staring at me. Sure this is India and there are hundreds of people stopping and staring at things at any given time, but I guess I did look strange. I was down on my knees trying to take a photograph of a pack of sanitary napkins from the bottom most shelves in the local supermarket. In my defence the packaging…

Identifying and choosing a suitable business/brand name is perhaps the first and the most important step towards creating your very own startup. A lot of time and effort goes into searching for and settling on a suitable name, and its equally, if not more important to protect that name. A brand name that you chose is not merely a name, but a reflection of the ideas, thoughts and relevance of the business symbolized by designs, logos, patterns, colours etc,.

The Indian Trademark Office has once again initiated a special drive from December 2013 to January 2014 for disposal of requests for recordal of post registration changes of registered Trademarks. The original notification is available here. The first such special drive was initiated earlier this year in January 2013 and after postponing it several times was put into action in March 2013. However, only a limited number of applications were cleared during this drive.

After a trademark application sails through the journey of examination, advertisement and opposition, it reaches the final and happy stage of registration. When the online status of a mark shows registered, it means, as the term suggests, the mark has obtained registration and the applicant becomes the legal owner/registrant of the said mark. A registration certificate mentioning the details of the trademark (including date of registration, registration number, Journal in which it was…

Britannia Industries Limited had filed an application for the trademark SNAX, which they had claimed to have been using from 1965. Britannia had already registered trademarks BRITANNIA SNAX for biscuits breads, buns etc in Class 30. The trademark application for the mark SNAX was published in the Trademarks Journal in 2005 and was opposed by PepsiCo on the grounds that the mark SNAX is snacks misspelt and since snacks was a common English word; it should not be registered as a trademark.