Registration of a trademark in India is granted for a period of 10 years from the date of filing the application in India. The trademark registration can be renewed every 10 years infinitely.
Voluntary cancellation of trademark registration in India
There are several occasions when the trademark owner would like to voluntarily cancel the registration of the trademark in India. In most occasions, the voluntary cancellation of trademark registration is due to an agreement entered by the trademark owner with a third party or for other business decisions taken by the trademark owner.
In order to voluntarily cancel the registration of a trademark in India, the trademark owner would have to file a request with the Indian trademark office along with the official fee and an accompanying affidavit detailing the grounds for which the trademark owner is seeking the voluntary cancellation of a registered trademark in India. The affidavit needs to be duly signed and verified by the trademark owner and notarised. A scanned copy of the affidavit will suffice for filing the request with the trademark office. In the event of not filing an affidavit, the trademark office would not process the request and would issue a scrutiny report requesting the trademark owner to file an affidavit stating the reason for seeking cancellation of the registration of the trademark in India.
In the present workload of the trademark office, it takes between 4 to 6 months before the request for voluntary cancellation of the registered trademark is processed by the Indian trademarks office.
Raja Selvam
Founder & Managing Attorney, Selvam & Selvam | Practice areas include Trademarks, Patents, Domain names & Business law. Visiting faculty, Department of Journalism, Madras University where I teach copyrights & trademarks law. Passionate about entrepreneurship, start-ups, stocks, farming, technology and law.
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