Sound Board

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

To all who read this, my aim here is to share something that I have been brooding about...It may even be something “you” have been brooding about.. Hopefully someone or maybe even the Indian Trademark Office will come up with a satisfying answer?

For those of you who use (and love, maybe?) the e-filing system (“system”) of the Trademarks Office, things just got lovelier. Until the evening of February 05, 2014, the Trademark Office’s system allowed trademark applications (under various forms) along with a couple of requests such as responding to the examination report issued by the Trademarks Office, filing a request for inclusion of excess characters in the specification of goods or services to be filed online.

We bring to you a guest post by Keshava H. B., a fifth year law student from University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun who wants to specialize in intellectual property laws. In this article, he talks about sound marks and smell marks.

We bring to you a guest post by Nemish Zaveri, a fourth year law student from Institute of Law, Nirma University with a keen interest in intellectual property laws. In this article, he presents his views on the requirement to serve the O-3 notice. An O-3 notice is a reminder sent to the registered proprietor of a trademark before the validity of his trademark expires.

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…