Trademark Registration

Trademark registration in India is governed by the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the Trade Marks Rules, 2017. An application for registration is filed under Section 18 of the Act, which requires the applicant to be the proprietor of the mark and to claim use or proposed use in relation to specified goods or services. Applications are filed under Rule 23 of the Trade Marks Rules, 2017, and examined by the Registrar to determine registrability.

The applicable government filing fee, as prescribed in the Trade Marks Rules, 2017, is Rs 4,500 per class for individuals, start-ups, and small enterprises (MSMEs), and Rs 9,000 per class for other applicants such as partnerships, LLPs, and companies not registered as MSMEs.

Once accepted, the application is advertised in the Trade Marks Journal, opening a four-month window under Section 21 during which any person may file a notice of opposition (Form TM-O, Rule 42). If no opposition is filed, or an opposition is decided in the applicant's favour after the evidence stage under Rules 45–47, the mark proceeds to registration.

A registered trademark is granted protection for ten years from the date of filing under Section 25, and may be renewed for successive ten-year periods; renewal and restoration procedures are governed by Rules 63 to 65 of the Trade Marks Rules, 2017. Registration is also vulnerable to removal for non-use: under Section 47, a mark that has not been used for a continuous period of five years and three months from the date of registration may be removed from the register on an application by an aggrieved person.

Section 29 defines infringement — unauthorised use of an identical or deceptively similar mark in relation to identical or similar goods/services — and Section 31 confers on a registered proprietor the presumption of validity of the registration in legal proceedings. Section 135 empowers courts to grant injunctions, damages, or an account of profits, and orders for delivery-up or destruction of infringing goods, in suits for infringement.

Our trademark registration service covers class selection and clearance search, application drafting and filing under Section 18, prosecution of Examiner objections, and monitoring through to advertisement, opposition (if any), and certificate issuance.

Trademark registration is the protection of a brand under the Trade Marks Act 1999 — the application to the Trademarks Registry for the registration of the mark, the examination under Section 18, the publication in the journal and the opposition, and the registration and the certificate. The registered trademark gives the owner the exclusive right to use the mark in relation to the goods and the services for which it is registered, and it is the asset the business's brand is built on.

The trademark is the brand's legal identity — the name, the logo, the tagline — and the registration is what makes the identity enforceable: the exclusive right, the protection against the infringement and the passing off, and the asset that can be licensed, assigned and valued. The process runs under the Trade Marks Act 1999 from the search and the filing to the registration, and its outcome is the mark the business owns.

The cost of an unregistered mark is the unprotected brand: the name that another business registers first, the competitor who uses the brand without the recourse, the brand that the business built but never owned. The registration is cheap against the brand it protects.

This service is for businesses protecting their brands. We conduct the trademark search, assess the registrability under the Trade Marks Act 1999, prepare and file the application with the correct class, manage the examination and the publication, respond to the objections and the oppositions, and obtain the registration — so the brand is owned, protected and enforceable.