Sound Board

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

Have you come across advertisement while watching TV that compare one product with another and it is quite obvious which the contender is despite them having “blurred” the brand name? The Pepsi and Coke disputes and one-upmanship have been going on for several years. What’s generally noticeable is that when one product is compared with another, we immediately recognise the two different products (which are generally trademarked) because of their brand names, the shape of the product and the…

The Madrid Protocol has simplified the process of filing trademark applications across the world by bringing it all under the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Once a trademark application has been filed in the home country or what is generally referred to as the origin country, one can designate other countries that are a part of the Madrid Protocol using the registration of the origin country as their earliest date of priority. Currently, 92 countries are a part of the Madrid…

The Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (CGPDTM) released a document titled the draft guidelines for examination of Patent applications in the field of pharmaceuticals on February 28, 2014 which was open for comments until March 31, 2014 which was eventually extended to April 4, 2014.

In my previous post I discussed three major reasons as to why descriptive words are bad trademarks. They generally will be objected to by the Registry, or they may be allowed with disclaimers and even if they are registered, they may not let you stop someone else from using a similar mark. A common way brand owners try and overcome this is by misspelling DISKRIPTIVE words to try and get them registered as trademarks.

What happens when you want to get a composite mark, which has both distinctive and non-distinctive elements,registered as a trademark? The answer is this - you simply have to disclaim that you claim no exclusive rights over the particular element or elements of the mark that the Registry concludes to be unregistrable standing alone on account of it being more of a generic term, to limit and define the rights of the proprietor, after which allowing you to proceed toward getting your mark…

We’ve all come across counterfeit products of popular brands and first copies. People have taken it one step further by selling products under the brand name of well-known trademarks like Facebook, Whatsapp and the like on clothing, food stalls and what not. There are a two possibilities; either it is a case of blatant trademark infringement and passing off or it is the lack of awareness. The latter suggests that a person manufacturing and selling such goods with well-known trademarks has no…

The Division Bench of the High Court of Delhi says it is, after having ruled in favour of “International Exhaustion” in the case of Kapil Wadhwa vs. Samsung Electronics Ltd., the only latest case available on the Doctrine of Exhaustion in India. So the bundle of exclusive rights granted to a trademark holder does not seem to include the fact that they cannot restrain parallel importers of those products who exploit this doctrine to benefit themselves.

Over the last few decades, the world economy has witnessed a paradigm shift as far as transaction of goods and services are concerned. Companies have expanded their business operations and established their manufacturing units across the globe and services have traversed boundaries, which has in effect led to the upswing of branding. Intellectual property plays a pivotal role in the trade related aspects and trademark law in such cases comes into play when issues regarding registration of mark…

A year ago, we wrote about the tentative amendment to the Trademark Rules which involved the increase in filing fees.The Trademark Rules have been Amended and published in the Official Gazette of India issued by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion.

So you’ve planned and taken all necessary precautions before filing or instructing your Counsel in India to file your trademark application in India and it has been filed, and now you’re waiting. (Also see 4 steps to register a trademark in India – The fast and cost effective way) While the trademark office has taken it upon itself to teach all counsels how much of a virtue patience is, on some occasions they may not be at fault. It may well be, that the trademark office is in fact waiting on…