Sound Board

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

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.

If you ask any patent agent or attorney to explain the concept of patents in two words, they will tell you that it is an “exclusionary right”. As is true in law and life, with rights come duties and responsibilities. So when you are given the right to exclude others from making your patent accessible to the public without your permission, you are obligated to ensure that you make your patent accessible to the public.

At the risk of over-simplifying things and shooting myself in the foot, copyright is the stream of intellectual property law that protects individual’s creative work. Take for example when you are enjoying a meal at a restaurant; if you were to stop and think about it, copyright exists in the music playing in the background, the menu, the recipe of the food on the table, the design on the table cloth, the photographs on the wall, the software on their system which calculates and prints out the…

Trademarks are to the real world, what domain names are to the virtual world; Trademarks are vital to every business because they help consumers associate the goods or services provided by them to that particular trademark thereby building reputation. Similarly, the Internet is the first port of call for anyone who wants to find information about anything and therefore, it is essential for a company to make its presence felt in the virtual world through a website.

Before all else, I would like to clarify that this article does not deal with how to get a patent in India. This article merely describes the procedure for making a patent application in India. The decision to provide a person with a patent is purely an administrative matter of the Indian Patent Office. Therefore, it is not possible to provide a definitive answer to questions like “Will my product be patented?” or “How long will it take for me to get a patent?”