Faq

Trademarks in India are governed by the Trade Marks Act, 1999 (“Act”) and Trademark Rules, 2017. The Act provides the procedure for the registration of any mark capable of being represented graphically as a word, device, label, numerals, or combination of colours, shape or sound, and capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one person from another. In other words, a trademark is a source identifier of businesses, products and services. ......

The forum for adjudicating commercial suits in India is governed by the Commercial Courts Act, 2015 (“CCA”), where cases are heard by courts at different levels depending on the valuation of the suits. Lesser-valued cases are heard by courts lower in the judicial hierarchy and fall outside the direct scrutiny of the CCA, thus being subject to relatively lower regulation. ......

Inventions that fall within, or overlap with, disclosures in the prior art are called “selection inventions”. Generally, selection inventions involve the selection of one or more specific embodiments, such as individual elements, subsets, or sub-ranges, within a larger known set or range disclosed in the prior art. This raises critical questions around how the novelty and inventive step of selection patents should be judged. ......

Design marking is a method used by proprietors to signal that their article is protected by design rights. It entails “marking” an article in a manner that informs the public at large that the article in question is the subject matter of a registered design. The issue of whether design marking is necessary or not has come up on occasion before Indian courts, who have tackled how such marking acts as an indicator of registration, and explained the rights that follow. ......

India’s ace badminton player PV Sindhu created history by winning a bronze medal in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics held recently, joining the ranks of a select few who have one more than individual medal in the history of the games. ......

The Designs office has now made its register electronically available, thus joining the ranks of the Patents E-register, making the database of registered designs available in entirety. ......

As intellectual property disputes grow in number in India, corresponding questions arise regarding the most appropriate adjudicating authority to be approached for redress. Besides regular courts, IP disputes also occasionally make their way into arbitrations. But the circumstances under which IP disputes can be referred to arbitration are not always clear. ......

An anti-suit injunction is an order by the court which restricts a party from filing or continuing with proceedings in another court, including foreign courts, with regard to the subject matter of the suit. When courts are approached by a party seeking an anti-suit injunction, they generally establish a ‘forum conveniens’, i.e., determine the most appropriate forum to decide upon the dispute. ......

What are the various stages and the timelines involved in the grant of an Indian design application? An Indian design application goes through the following stages, till grant: Filing: First application in India: It is recommended to file the first application in India as soon as possible after a design is conceived. Convention design application......