India: Trademark

Subscribe
Intellectual property law and copyright law thought leadership, articles, podcasts, videos and webinars from expert sources across the legal world. Explore insights covering topics such as licensing and syndication, patent law, trade secrets and trademark law.
Article
Fame, Fortune, And The Fine Print: The Legal Fight For Personality Rights In India
Personality rights—often referred to as the right of publicity—grant individuals control over the commercial use of their identity, including their name, image, likeness, voice, signature, or other distinctive personal attributes. These rights protect individuals from unauthorized exploitation of their persona for commercial gain. Historically, personality rights emerged at the intersection of privacy and property rights. Legal systems have grappled with whether to treat a person’s identity as a facet of personal dignity (and privacy) or as an economic asset akin to intellectual property.
India Government
ML
MZM Legal
Article
Protection For Distinctive Trade Marks In India - From Film Title To Well-Known Mark: The Delhi High Court's Decision In GHOSTBUSTERS Cross-Class
A film title, repeated across sequels, merchandise and decades of publicity, can come to function as a trade mark in its own right, a badge that the public associates with a single source. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. v. Registrar of Trade Marks concerned exactly such a title, GHOSTBUSTERS, and the protection it can claim against a very different product bearing a very similar name. The Delhi High Court’s decision is important for owners of strong, distinctive marks, including film titles, because it confirms how cross-class protection for a well-known mark is to be approached, and that it does not depend on a prior formal declaration.
India IP
SR
S.S. Rana & Co. Advocates
Article
Designs Without Borders: What The Riyadh Design Law Treaty Means For Indian Businesses Expanding Abroad
It is worth being precise about what the Riyadh Design Law Treaty does and does not do. It does not harmonise the substantive law of what qualifies as a protectable design, nor does it create a single global design right. What it harmonises is procedure  the formalities an applicant must satisfy when seeking design protection in a member country. That may sound modest, but for businesses filing across multiple jurisdictions, procedural divergence is precisely where cost, delay and lost rights accumulate.
India Strategy
SR
S.S. Rana & Co. Advocates
Article
Lookalikes On The Shelf: Where Brand Protection Meets Food-Safety Regulation In India
When a new product appears on the shelf dressed to resemble an established brand, it can cause two different kinds of harm, and Indian law addresses them through two different bodies of rule. The first harm is to the brand owner and to consumers who are misled as to source — the domain of trade mark law and the tort of passing off. The second is to consumers’ broader interests in accurate information and safe food — the domain of food-safety and consumer-protection regulation. A single lookalike can implicate both at once, which is why these disputes often sit at the intersection of the two regimes.
India Consumer
SR
S.S. Rana & Co. Advocates
Article
Delhi High Court Refers Conflicting Territorial Jurisdiction Jurisprudence To A Larger Bench
In a comparative advertising dispute between Hindustan Unilever Limited (“HUL” or the “Plaintiff”) and Kwick Living (I) Private Limited (“Kwick Living” or the “Defendant”), a single Judge of the Delhi high court, vide order dated 25 August 2026, referred to a large bench the question of territorial jurisdiction in IP suits, due to multiple, conflicting precedents on when a court can entertain a case on the ground of website accessibility only.
India IP
SR
S.S. Rana & Co. Advocates
Article
Protecting Silicon Innovation: What India's Semiconductor IC Layout-Design Numbers Mean For Indian Companies
India’s semiconductor ambitions are usually discussed in terms of fabs, packaging units, and PLI-linked investment. Less visible, but equally important for companies actually designing chips, is the legal regime that protects the layout itself — the specific arrangement of transistors, interconnects, and circuit elements that makes a chip work and that took months (or years) of design effort to create.
India IP
SR
S.S. Rana & Co. Advocates
Article
WhatsApp's Shift To Usernames: Impersonation Risk, Regulatory Pushback And The DPDP Compliance Test
WhatsApp’s proposed move away from phone-number-based identification towards a username-based system has, within days of being reported, triggered two distinct but connected reactions in India: public concern voiced by industry founders and privacy experts over impersonation and data-sharing risk, and a reported regulatory direction to Meta to pause the feature’s India rollout pending consultations.
India Privacy
SR
S.S. Rana & Co. Advocates
Article
ZARA v. ZORA: Delhi High Court Holds Prior 'Well-Known' Declaration Not Mandatory To Invoke Section 11(2)
In a significant ruling clarifying the contours of well-known trademark protection, the Delhi High Court has held that a proprietor need not obtain a prior formal declaration of “well-known” status before invoking Section 11(2) of the Trade Marks Act, 1999. Setting aside an order of the Registrar of Trade Marks, the Court cancelled the registration of the mark ZORA in Class 24, holding it deceptively similar to the well-known mark ZARA and detrimental to its distinctive character and repute.
India IP
SR
S.S. Rana & Co. Advocates
Article
Rule 45 Evidence Deadline Is Directory, Not Mandatory: Bombay High Court
In a significant ruling delivered on June 17, 2026, the Bombay High Court in Black Diamond Motors Pvt. Ltd. v. Registrar of Trade Marks & Anr. (Commercial Miscellaneous Petition No. 23 of 2026) has held that the 2-month deadline under Rule 45(1) of the Trade Marks Rules, 2017 (“2017 Rules”) for filing an evidence affidavit in support of an opposition or rectification application is directory and not mandatory. Hon’ble Justice Somasekhar Sundaresan upheld the Registrar’s power under Section 131 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 (“TM Act”) to condone delays in filing such evidence, even where the application seeking extension is filed long after the deadline has expired.
India IP
SR
S.S. Rana & Co. Advocates
Article
When Designs Are Stolen: Understanding Remedies For Design Piracy Under Section 22 Of The Designs Act, 2000
A registered design can be one of the most valuable intellectual property assets of a business. It may be the shape of a bottle, the pattern on a fabric, the configuration of a furniture piece, or the ornamentation of a consumer product that makes it recognisable in a crowded market. When a competitor copies that design and commercialises an identical or deceptively similar product, the resulting harm may extend beyond lost sales to the erosion of the exclusivity associated with the design.
India IP
KS
King, Stubb & Kasiva
Article
IP Litigation – Territorial Jurisdiction Of Court – Delhi HC Refers Issues To Larger Bench
The Delhi High Court has identified critical inconsistencies in how territorial jurisdiction is determined in intellectual property disputes, particularly those involving online transactions and e-commerce. A Single Judge has referred three fundamental questions to a Larger Bench to resolve the conflicting interpretations of the Civil Procedure Code, Trade Marks Act, and Copyright Act provisions that govern where IP suits can be filed.
India IP
LS
Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan
See more

Latest Videos

See more