IP Litigation Support

Intellectual property litigation support covers enforcement and defence of trademark, copyright, and patent rights before Indian courts. Civil remedies for trademark infringement are set out in Section 135 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, which empowers courts to grant injunctions (including ex parte and interim relief), and to award damages or an account of profits, along with orders for delivery-up or destruction of infringing goods and marks.

A significant structural change to the IP litigation landscape occurred with the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021, which abolished the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) with retrospective effect from 4 April 2021. All appeals and matters that were pending before the IPAB — including trademark rectification and revocation appeals, and patent revocation proceedings — stand transferred to the jurisdictional High Courts. Original commercial IP disputes, including infringement and passing-off suits, continue to be heard by Commercial Courts / Commercial Divisions of High Courts constituted under the Commercial Courts Act, 2015, which prescribes specialised procedure — including case management hearings and provisions for summary judgment — for the speedy disposal of commercial IP disputes.

Our litigation support includes drafting and filing plaints, replies, and interim applications, coordinating with counsel on evidence and cross-examination strategy, and representing clients in rectification, opposition, and infringement proceedings before the relevant High Court or Commercial Court, in light of this post-2021 forum structure.

IP litigation support is the technical and the accounting work behind intellectual property disputes — the infringement analysis under the Patents Act 1970, the Trade Marks Act 1999 and the Copyright Act 1957, the evidence of the use and the sales, the computation of the damages and the accounts of profit, and the preparation of the documents and the experts' reports the litigation requires. The chartered accountant's role in IP litigation is the money side: what was sold, what was infringing, what was lost and what is owed.

The IP dispute is decided on the evidence as much as the law. The plaintiff must prove the ownership, the infringement and the damage; the defendant must prove the invalidity, the non-infringement or the lack of the loss. The financial evidence — the sales records, the royalty computations, the lost-profit analysis, the accounts of profit — is where the case is won or lost on the numbers.

The cost of weak financial evidence is the weak case: the damages that cannot be proved, the profits that cannot be computed, the claim that fails on the numbers even where the law is favourable. The courts decide the amounts on the evidence the parties bring, and the evidence the parties bring is the work product of the accountants.

This service is for businesses in IP disputes — as plaintiffs or defendants. We analyse the infringement and the use, compute the damages and the accounts of profit under the IP statutes, build the financial evidence — the sales, the costs, the lost profits, the royalties — prepare the experts' reports and the documents, and support the counsel and the proceedings with the numbers the case needs.