First in a series measuring what the Trademark Office actually does against what its own Manual says it should do. The Registry published a draft Manual of Trade Marks Practice and Procedure on 10 March 2015. It published the next one on 21 August 2026 and gave stakeholders fifteen days to comment. Eleven years between drafts, and a fortnight to respond to the result. This series looks at where practice drifted in the meantime, and whether the new draft fixes it.
The short version.
- Three examiners raised three contradictory objections to the same field on Form TM-A. One wanted the name deleted, one wanted it expanded, one wanted a single letter added.
- Every one of them costs the applicant a Form TM-M, a fee, and a month of delay before examination on merits even begins.
- The phrase “Trade Mark column” does not appear anywhere in the 211 pages of the 2026 draft Manual. Neither draft has ever said what that field should contain.
- Practitioners pay the fee rather than argue, because a formality dispute has no route of appeal short of the High Court.
Three examination reports
Here are three formality objections on device marks, all issued by the Trademark Office, all on applications where the mark was uploaded as an image, named in the Trade Mark column, and described in the Image Description column. The marks below are placeholders. The objections are verbatim in substance.
Application one. Mark uploaded: a red cartoon fox standing upright. Trade Mark column: “Happy Fox (Device)”. Image Description: “Image of a red fox standing upright”. Objection: amend the Trade Mark column to read “Device” only, by filing TM-M with fee.
Application two. Mark uploaded: the letter Z in a black circle followed by the words zephyrlabs.com. Trade Mark column: “Zephyr Labs (Device)”. Image Description: “The device consists of the letter Z inside a black circle along with the words zephyrlabs.com”. Objection: “Applicant is required to confine the trademark in accordance with the applied device by filing TM-M with fee as the device is Z Zephyr Labs.com however only Zephyr Labs is specified in the Trademark column.”
Application three. Mark uploaded: a circular seal with a stylised letter M in the centre and the words MERIDIAN ACADEMY around the rim. Trade Mark column: “Meridian Academy (Device)”. Image Description: “The mark contains the letter M covered by artistic elements and the text MERIDIAN ACADEMY”. Objection: “There is clear distinction between the trade mark applied for and the device image uploaded. The device of alphabet M forms an essential, integral, prominent and inseparable part of the subject mark but the same has not been mentioned in the Trade Mark column. This leads to ambiguity. Therefore, the applicant is required to amend the application accordingly by filing Form TM-M with requisite fee.”
Read those three together. Examiner one wants the name deleted. Examiner two wants it expanded to include a letter and a domain suffix. Examiner three wants a single letter added because leaving it out creates “ambiguity”, in an application where the very next field on the form describes the letter in words. Three examiners in the same office, three opposite instructions, and every one of them costs the applicant a TM-M.
What the form actually asks for
Form TM-A has three fields for the mark. The Trademark Image, which is the mark. The Trade Mark column, which is a text label. And the Image Description column, which exists for exactly one reason: so that a device mark can be described in words, for Vienna codification, for search, and so that nobody has to guess what the picture contains.
The Image Description field was filled in on all three applications. In application three it names the letter M in so many words. The objection says the letter is missing. The examiner did not read the next line of the form.
There is no rule, no practice direction and no public notice that tells an applicant what the Trade Mark column must contain for a device mark. Some practitioners write the word element. Some write the word element followed by “(Device)” or “(Label)”. Some write “Device”. Some write every letter and word visible in the image. All of these have been accepted for years, by the same Registry. Which one gets objected to depends on who examines the file that day.
It is worth noting what the Rules do require. Under Rule 26 of the Trade Marks Rules 2017, a description of the mark in words is called for in two situations only: for a three-dimensional mark under Rule 26(3), and for a shape of goods or packaging under Rule 26(4). Rule 26(6) lets the Registrar require a better representation if the one filed is unsatisfactory. For an ordinary two-dimensional device, the Rules do not require a written description at all. The Image Description column is a convenience of the form, not an obligation under the Rules — and the Trade Mark column is not mentioned in either.
What the Manual says
Nothing.
The 2015 draft, at paragraph 4.2 of Chapter I, says the representation of the trade mark “must clearly identify the trade mark” and “should show clearly all the features of the trade mark”. The 2026 draft says the same thing in the same words, at paragraph 1.10.2, and cites Rule 23(2) and Rule 26 for it. Both are about the image. Neither says a word about what goes in the Trade Mark column.
The phrase “Trade Mark column” does not appear anywhere in the 2026 draft. Not once in 211 pages.
The word “confine”, which the second examiner used, appears in the draft only in relation to specifications of goods and services and to conditions and limitations on registration — deleting items that fall outside the class applied for, or narrowing the scope of a registration. It has never been used for the name of a mark.
The phrase “essential, integral, prominent and inseparable”, which the third examiner used, does not appear in the draft at all. It is language borrowed from infringement judgments on the dominant part of a composite mark, and it has been pressed into service to justify a data entry objection.
The 2026 draft does address what happens once one of these objections is raised. Paragraph 3.1.10 provides that where an application for amendment or correction is filed on Form TM-M, “the designated officer shall at first dispose of the TM-M and communicate such orders via email to the Applicant’s agent”. That is the delay, written into the Manual: the file does not move to examination on merits until the TM-M the examiner asked for has been disposed of.
What the draft does not say, anywhere, is that a device mark must be named in any particular way.
The Registry has, in other words, invented a formality, applied it inconsistently for years, and has now had two chances to write it into the Manual. It has not done so. Either the requirement exists, in which case it belongs in the Manual so that applicants can comply with it at filing, or it does not, in which case examiners should stop raising it.
Why practitioners amend anyway
Every practitioner reading this knows what happens next, and it is the part that never appears in any manual.
The reply that says “the mark applied for is the device as depicted, the Image Description covers every element, the Trade Mark column is an index label and nothing in the Act or Rules requires it to recite every letter in the device” is legally correct. It is also the reply that gets the file parked. The application sits at “Objected” for months, sometimes years, with the reply on record and nobody moving it. There is no mechanism to escalate a formality dispute short of a writ before the High Court. The examiner who raised the objection is the person who decides whether to waive it, and waiving it means accepting it should not have been raised.
So the calculation is simple. File the TM-M, pay Rs 900, wait a month for it to be disposed of, then wait again for the substantive report that the formality report told you was coming. Or stand on principle and watch the application go cold. Practitioners choose the TM-M every time, not because they agree with it but because the client’s application matters more than the argument. The Registry’s error becomes the applicant’s expense.
The cost of a wrong objection
For the applicant, each of these objections means the official fee for a TM-M — Rs 900 filed online, Rs 1,000 on paper — professional fees for the reply and the amendment, a month or more of delay while the TM-M is disposed of, and then a second examination report on merits, which the first report deferred. For a startup filing across four or five classes and two or three brands, this is not a rounding error. It is a second filing fee for every application, spent on correcting a form that was correctly filled in.
For the practitioner, it means explaining to a client why the same mark, filed the same way, was accepted in one class and objected in another, and why the fix is to pay again. It means absorbing the drafting time, because no client should be billed for the Registry’s inconsistency, and taking the reputational hit when the client concludes, reasonably, that the practitioner got it wrong.
For the Registry, it means a second round of work on every one of these files, an extra TM-M to dispose of, and a second examination report to issue. Nobody benefits. The objection creates work at every desk it touches.
What the Manual should say
The 2026 draft should add, under representation of the mark and again under the examiner’s formality checks, something to this effect:
Where the application is for a device, label or composite mark, the trade mark is the representation uploaded with the application. The Trade Mark column is a reference label for the purposes of the Register and search. It may contain the word element of the mark, the word element followed by “(Device)” or “(Label)”, or the word “Device”. No objection shall be raised on the ground that the Trade Mark column does not reproduce every letter, word or figurative element of the representation, provided the Image Description column adequately describes the mark. Where the Image Description is absent or inadequate, the examiner shall require the applicant to supply or amend that description, and shall not require amendment of the Trade Mark column.
It would also tell applicants, for the first time, what the form actually wants from them.
This post is about one field on one form. The reason to start here is that it is the clearest possible example of how the Registry now operates: a requirement nobody wrote down, applied differently by different examiners, enforced through the threat of a stalled file, and left out of the Manual that is supposed to bring “uniformity and consistency of practice”. That phrase is not ours. It is how the draft Manual describes its own purpose, on its second page, in the version published in 2026.
Stakeholders were given fifteen days to say so. That window has now closed.
Frequently asked questions
What must the Trade Mark column contain for a device mark? No rule, practice direction or public notice says. In practice the Registry has accepted the word element, the word element followed by “(Device)” or “(Label)”, the word “Device” alone, and a full recital of every element in the image. All four have been accepted, and all four have been objected to, depending on the examiner.
Is there any rule requiring the Trade Mark column to reproduce every element of the device? No. The Trade Marks Rules 2017 govern the representation of the mark, not the text label. Rule 26 requires a description in words only for three-dimensional marks under Rule 26(3) and for shape of goods or packaging under Rule 26(4). Rule 26(6) allows the Registrar to require a better representation. None of them addresses the Trade Mark column.
Does the draft Manual of Trade Marks Practice and Procedure deal with this? No. The phrase “Trade Mark column” does not appear anywhere in the 211 pages of the 2026 draft. Paragraph 1.10.2 addresses the representation of the mark — that it must clearly identify the mark and show all its features — and says nothing about the text label.
Should I reply to the objection or file the TM-M? A reply arguing that the Trade Mark column is only an index label is legally sound, but there is no way to escalate a formality dispute short of a writ petition, and the file can sit at “Objected” indefinitely. Most practitioners file the TM-M at Rs 900 and move on, because paragraph 3.1.10 of the draft Manual confirms the TM-M must be disposed of before the application proceeds to examination on merits.
How much does a wrong formality objection cost? The TM-M fee of Rs 900 online or Rs 1,000 on paper, professional fees for the reply and amendment, and roughly a month of delay before the substantive examination report issues. Across several classes and brands it amounts to a second filing fee on every application.
The next post in this series looks at a different objection, on a different set of applications filed by the same applicants: a Section 11 citation raised against the applicant’s own earlier mark, without reading the applicant’s name on the cited record or the no objection letter filed with the application.
The draft Manual and the public notice inviting comments are on ipindia.nic.in.