Trademark Registration – A brief note
Our name is our Idea and its our brainchild. Trademark Registration help us to protect our brand, logo, name, or combination of colours. Trademark Registration provides protection to the owner of the mark by ensuring the exclusive right to use it, or to authorize another to use the same in return for payment. A trademark is a mark which helps in distinguishing goods or services of one brand from another.
A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, or design that distinguishes the source of products (trademarks) or services (service marks) of one business from its competitors. A trademark, being the recall factor, helps customers identify goods or services in respective protect/service region. Therefore, it is necessary to register your trademark to have legal claim over it and prevent rival entities from exploiting the same.
Registration
Registrar of Trademarks Chennai has the jurisdiction over the state of Kerala. The application fee will be Rs 45,00/- or Rs 9,000/- per calss. One brand can register in multiple classes also, by paying additional fees for each class.
Benefits of Registration of Trademark:
- The Trademark Registration gives us and exclusive right to the trademark in a particular territory.
- The barnding and its Trademark Registration helps to diffrentiate our products or services from othgers
- It allows the owner of a registered trademark to prevent unauthorized use of his barnd or logo in relation to his products and services.
- The Trademark Registration enables us to easily reserve our Company Name
- Trademark Registration will also enabels us to get a superiority for our products in ecommerce websites
Process of Trademark Registration
After application Trademark office will check the correctness of the document. After ensuring the correctness of the document they will send the application to an examiner. from this stage we can use “TM” with our logo or brand name applied. The word “TM” means trademark application under processing. However if any discrepancy found by the trademark office, they will send the application for resubmission. And after successfull completion of documentation the same will send to examiner
The examiner will excamine the trademark application and check the simalrity of our brand or logo or tradename with the registered one or prior applied one. If the examiner founds any similarity with any other marks or logo or tradename, registered or applied, examiner will ask for reply or clarification. If there is no similarity found or reply for quries asked are satisfactory, examiner will send it for publish in trademark journal.
After publising the trademark journel, the application will open for public for their inspection and raisng objections if any. If the mark or logo or tradename is not objected within 2-3 months the trademark application will be approved and the trademark certificate will be issued by the Registrar of Trademarks. After registration, the Trademark Applicant can use the letter (R) with his tradename or logo applied for.
Enforcement of Trademark Rights
Trademarks can be protected under the statutory law, i.e., under the TM Act and the common law, i.e., under the remedy of passing off. If a person is using a similar mark for similar or related goods or services or is using a well-known mark, the rightful owner of trademark can file a suit against that person for violation of the IP rights irrespective of the fact that the trademark is registered or not. Registration of a trademark is not a pre-requisite in order to sustain a civil or criminal action against violation of trademarks in India.
The prior adoption and use of the trademark is of utmost importance under trademark laws. The relief which a Court may usually grant in a suit for infringement or passing off includes permanent and interim injunction, damages or account of profits, delivery of the infringing goods for destruction and cost of the legal proceedings. It is pertinent to note that infringement of a trademark is also a cognizable offence and criminal proceedings can also be initiated against the infringers.
Term of protection
Initial registration and each renewal of registration, of a trademark shall be for a term of 10 years. The registration of a trademark shall be renewable indefinitely
About Us :- “Biswas Filing Service”, a Business Consultancy based in Trivandrum, Kerala. We are providing wide-ranging Business as well as Intellectual Property Consultancy Services. Our team comprises a set of highly qualified and experienced professionals and partners across the State of Kerala, that embody amongst the best legal talent and trademark agents with highly specialized backgrounds.
The above writeup is only our views based on our experience
