An application filed in 1992. An opposition the applicant’s counsel never received. Six letters over seven years, none answered. An abandonment order that appeared on the website a year before it was supposedly passed. The IPAB’s phrase for it was “official indifference”.
The timeline
The appeal arose from an abandonment order in an opposition matter, and the sequence tells the story better than any summary:
- May 1992 — the appellant files a trademark application.
- 8 January 2001 — the mark is advertised.
- 2 March 2001 — the respondent files an opposition.
- 15 May 2001 — new counsel takes over, and never receives the notice of opposition.
- 1 June 2004 — counsel requests a copy. Unanswered.
- When records go online — they discover the mark has been abandoned, and on 23 July 2008 seek clarification. Also ignored.
- September 2008 — counsel files a Right to Information application, which finally forces a response: an investigation is ongoing.
- January 2009, April 2009, June 2011, July 2011 — further letters.
- June 2011 — the opponent withdraws the opposition. The Registry remains unresponsive.
- May 2012 — the Registry publishes an abandonment order.
- August 2012 — the appellant appeals.
Twenty years from filing; eleven from the opposition nobody served.
The IPAB’s response
The Board’s assessment was unusually direct:
“We disapprove of this attitude of an authority vested with quasi-judicial powers.”
It directed the Registry to answer within two weeks:
- Why the online status showed ‘abandoned’ in 2008 when the order was passed in 2009?
- Why the letters were not answered?
- Why there was no communication after the opposition was withdrawn?
- Why a Senior Examiner — not the Registrar — issued the order?
- Whether notice was properly served on any party?
The first and fourth questions are the substantive ones. A status appearing online before the order that produced it suggests the record was not generated by the decision at all. And an order issued by an officer without the authority to make it is liable to be set aside regardless of its merits.
Why it mattered
This was not an isolated file. The same pattern — notices not served, correspondence unanswered, statuses changing without orders — affected numerous matters, and the practical consequence is that inaction prevents legal recourse. A party cannot appeal an order they were never sent, or contest an abandonment for which no reasons exist.
The encouraging part was the Board’s willingness to take it seriously, and the demonstration that creative advocacy works where ordinary correspondence does not. The RTI application is the notable move here: after seven years of unanswered letters, a statutory information request produced a response within weeks. It remains one of the more effective tools available when a file has gone silent.
What has changed since. The specific failures here have been addressed in part — electronic service under the 2017 Rules, online status records, and a Registry considerably more digitised than the one described. And the IPAB itself was abolished in 2021, its jurisdiction passing to the High Courts, which have shown the same impatience with unexplained abandonments. But the underlying lesson is unchanged: monitor your own applications, because a system that fails silently will not tell you it has failed.
The takeaways
- Notices not served cannot support abandonment — the recurring defect.
- An RTI application forces a response where letters do not.
- Orders must come from the officer empowered to make them.
- Monitor status independently — silent failures are invisible until too late.
Frequently asked questions
Can a trademark be abandoned if the notice was never served? It should not be — proper service is the foundation of the abandonment, and tribunals and courts have consistently set aside abandonments where service could not be shown.
What can I do if the Registry does not respond to my letters? A Right to Information application is often effective, as it was here after years of unanswered correspondence.
Who is empowered to pass an abandonment order? The Registrar — the IPAB specifically questioned why a Senior Examiner had issued the order in this case.
Does the IPAB still hear these appeals? No — the IPAB was abolished in 2021 and its jurisdiction transferred to the High Courts.