Logo registration in India: how to protect a logo properly

The trade mark is the one that stops a competitor. Copyright adds protection against someone lifting the artwork for unrelated uses, and is useful evidence of creation and ownership. A copyright application for a logo needs a no-conflict certificate from the Trade Marks Registry, so the trade mark search comes first either way.

• Word mark: the name in plain letters. It protects the word in any font, colour or design, and is the broadest protection a brand can have.
• Device mark: the logo as a picture, with or without words. It protects that visual; a competitor using your name in a different design may not infringe it.
• Composite mark: name and logo filed together as one image. Protection is for the combination as a whole, which is narrower than it looks, and if the logo is redesigned the registration no longer matches what you use.

If the budget allows one application, file the word mark. If it allows two, file the word and the logo separately. File a composite mark only when the name alone is too descriptive to register and the design supplies the distinctiveness. Brands redesign logos every few years; they rarely rename.

A logo filed in black and white is, as a rule, protected in all colour combinations. A logo filed in colour with a colour claim is protected for those colours. File in black and white unless the colours themselves are what customers recognise. The image should be a clean, high-contrast file within the Registry’s size limits, showing exactly what you use: one stray tagline in the image becomes part of the mark.

1. Search. Word and phonetic searches for the name, and a Vienna code search for the figurative elements of the logo, in your classes; see our search guide and find the classes with the class finder.
2. File Form TM-A online with the image, the description of the mark, the goods or services, the date of first use or a statement that use is proposed, and the proof of startup or MSME status for the lower fee. The ™ symbol can be used from that day.
3. Vienna codification and formalities check, then examination. If the examiner objects, a reply is due within a month; see our status guide.
4. Publication in the Trade Marks Journal for four months, during which anyone may oppose.
5. Registration, valid ten years from the filing date. The ® symbol may be used only now; using it before registration is an offence.

An unopposed application takes roughly six to nine months. The rights, once granted, date back to the day of filing.

The designer does, unless they are your employee acting in the course of employment or have assigned it to you in writing. Paying a freelancer or an agency gives you, at best, an implied licence to use the logo, not ownership, and a designer can lawfully reuse elements or object to changes. Before filing anything, get a signed assignment of copyright identifying the logo and all its versions, for the whole world and for the full term, with a waiver of the right to be named. Registries and acquirers both ask for it. Marketplace logos built from stock elements or templates cannot be owned exclusively by anyone, and make weak trade marks.

• Filing only the composite logo and never the word.
• A logo made of a descriptive word in a plain font, which is refused under section 9 as lacking distinctiveness.
• Including the ® symbol, a tagline, a web address or the words Private Limited inside the image.
• Filing in the wrong class, or in the goods class but not class 35 when you also retail under the brand.
• Changing the logo after filing; a material change needs a new application.
• Not using the mark: a registration unused for five years can be removed on application by a competitor.

Our trade mark service files word and logo marks at ₹1,000 per class plus the government fee, and copyright registration of the artwork starts at ₹1,499. The full fee table is in our fees guide.