Sound Board

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

Lawyers in general are not the most loved people on the planet. There is always a sense of caution when we’re dealt with. It’s also probably why the legal profession has two patron saints St. Ives and St. Thomas Moore (must be twice as difficult for us to get into heaven). Anyway leaving God and the Saints out of it, in any Company (more so in an FMCG one) the In-House legal team is generally disliked to a great extent by the Marketing team and are at loggerheads with each other on a fairly…

A recent study conducted by ‘We Are Social’ found that despite these slow speeds, Internet users in India spend almost 5 hours on the net every day, with 40% of that time spent on social media. Going by these statistics, Indian users roughly spend about 2 hours on social media and which platform they use will probably differ based of age, profession and purpose for use. So those of us who fit this description and spend most of those 2 hours on Facebook, would have come across several internet…

Champagne, Puma, Darjeeling Tea and Ford are known all over the world. A common man would recognize the given names as famous brands. On looking closely it can be realized that the above mentioned names do not belong to the same category.

The facts narrated in one of recent orders of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) send out one clear signal: constant vigilance!

The trademark registration process, which we have covered in an earlier post is fairly straightforward. A trademark application is filed, examined by the Trademark office, either refused or allowed subject to a hearing, advertised and registered if it is not opposed. In this post I’ve decided to cover the examination process and in particular responding to an examination report.

The Petitioner Sri Darshan Kumar started a partnership firm along with Sri Ranjit Kumar Sharma (Respondent) and Sri Raj Kumar in the year 2004. In due course of the business the firm started using the mark BAWA/BAWA FEED for goods such as cattle feed, poultry feed and other allied goods. On 22nd September the respondent filed for a trademark registration for BAWA/BAWA FEED under classes 31 and 35, claiming usage of the mark from 1st April 2001. Both the applications had the address of the firm…

The term “ objected ’ implies that the particular trademark application has been examined and a report generated as well, laying down the objections against the registrability of the mark.

Many a time, the online status of a mark shows ‘ exam report issued ,’ perceiving which, one might assume that it implies ‘issuance of examination report’ post examination of the mark. But in reality, the said status is being used by the Trademark Office to denote that the mark has been ordered to be advertised and is yet to be advertised.

In my earlier posts (here and here), I discussed the position of law on injunctions, the requirements for grant of temporary injunction and relevant cases with respect to trademarks in India. So let’s assume that we managed to restrain the defendants from using our trademark, what next? We want the defendants to pay (literally) for what they did and compensate our losses, to the maximum possible extent. This sum of money claimed as compensation for loss or injury is what we refer to as damages.…

The year 2014 has witnessed a lot of goods entering the family of Geographical Indicators ( GI ). Goods such as Madurai Malli (jasmine), Pattamadai Pai (Pattamadai mat), Nachiarkoil Kuthuvilakku (Nachiarkoil lamp), Toda Embroidery, Thanjavur Veena and Chettinad Kottan (palmyra basketry) have all become a part of the GI family thus bringing Tamil Nadu with the second highest number of registered GIs in the country; A total of 24.