Trademark Renewal

A trademark is essentially a characteristic of your brand. It could be your brand name, your brand’s logo, or even your brand’s slogan. For example, ‘Nike’, the ‘Swoosh’, or the slogan ‘Just Do It’. In some cases, the brand’s name and logo are combined into one, as in the case of BMW, or Coca-Cola. That is called a Logo Composite Mark.

A trademark grants you commercial rights to sell a particular brand name in a certain sector of the economy. There are 45 sectors and each sector is called a class. For instance, Class 28 refers to Toys, Games, and Sports. So if you want to protect your toy brand, you need to make an application under Class 28 and get exclusive commercial rights, to sell your brand of toys under that class.

If you have a certain brand name, or a logo, or a slogan in mind, we can do a trademark search for you. A simple way to do this yourself, is to just go online to the internet and check if there is a similar company with a similar name to yours, on the internet. You should also check for the domain name availability of your brand.

The Trademark Registry has classified goods and services under 45 classes. Your application must mention the class/classes the goods/services represent. The trademark would be registered under those classes only.

If your trademark is similar to an existing application, would hurt religious sentiments, contains geographical names or common words. It would also be rejected if it is likely to cause confusion. So, you can’t register the word ‘car’ for a car brand, but may do so for a brand of electronics.

As soon as you file the application, you receive an acknowledgement, which gives you the right to use the ™ symbol. 

Trademarks and copyrights are both intellectual property, but serve different purposes. A copyright applies to literary and audio-visual (music, photographs, movies) works. So it’s an exclusive right granted to the creator or author of a book, script, software, music, photograph or movie. The owner has the right to stop the publication of any work that shares similarities with his/her work, unless it has been fairly used. Registration is not necessary. However, as copyright infringement has become commonplace in the Internet age, and you need a registration to take the matter to court, copyright registration has gained importance. A patent is a right granted for a product or process to an individual or enterprise. This right grants its owner the ability to exclude others from making, using, selling or importing the patented product or process without prior approval. In exchange for this right, the applicant must fully disclose the invention. A patent is valid for 20 years, after which it falls into the public domain.

No! The registered trademark under Trademark Act 2000 is only valid in India. But in few other countries, it can be used as a base for registering the trademark in those countries.

A trademark is an intellectual property owned by the owner. Hence, it can be sold, transferred, franchised. However, only registered trademarks enjoys these rights.

The Registered owner of a trademark can create establish and protect the goodwill of his products or services, he can stop other traders from unlawfully using his trademark, sue for damages and secure destruction of infringing goods and or labels.