Trademark search in India: how to check a name before you build a brand on it

The Trade Marks Registry’s public search is on the IP India website under Trade Marks, Public Search. It covers every application and registration on the Indian register, with its status. It offers three searches, and a careful check uses all of them.

1. Choose Wordmark as the search type.
2. Enter the name and choose Start With first, then Contains, then Match With. Start With finds marks beginning with your word; Contains finds it anywhere inside a longer mark.
3. Enter the class number. Find yours with our trademark class finder.
4. Run the search, then repeat for every related class, and with the obvious variants: spacing, plural, a common misspelling, and the distinctive part alone if the name has a descriptive word attached.

Choose Phonetic and enter the name as it sounds. The Registry compares marks by sound as well as spelling, so Kwality conflicts with Quality and Lyka with Laika. The phonetic search returns sound-alikes that a wordmark search misses, and it is the one examiners rely on when citing earlier marks under section 11.

Logos are indexed under the Vienna Classification, a six-digit code for each figurative element: a lion is 03.01.01, a star 01.01.01. Choose Vienna Code, enter the code for the main element of your logo and the class, and review the images returned. It is slower and less precise than the word searches, but a device mark copied from, or close to, a registered one is refused just the same.

Each result shows the mark, the application number, the class, the proprietor and the status. Open any that looks close and read the goods and services description, the date of application, the claimed date of first use, and the status:

• Registered and Accepted or Advertised marks are live rights. A close match in the same or a related class is a serious obstacle.
• Objected and Formalities Chk Pass marks are pending; they have priority over you from their filing date if they proceed.
• Abandoned, Refused, Withdrawn and Removed marks are not rights on the register, but read why: a refusal as descriptive tells you what will happen to yours, and the owner of an abandoned mark may still be using it and hold common-law rights.

What each status means is set out in our status guide.

Under section 11 a mark is refused if it is identical or similar to an earlier mark and covers identical or similar goods or services, so that the public is likely to be confused. The test is the overall impression on an ordinary buyer with imperfect recollection: sound, appearance and idea together, not a letter-by-letter comparison. Adding a descriptive word, changing a vowel or adding a logo to someone else’s word does not avoid it.

Similar goods reach across classes. Clothing in class 25 conflicts with retail of clothing in class 35; software in class 9 with software services in class 42; restaurant services in 43 with packaged food in 29 and 30. Well-known marks, on the Registry’s published list, are protected in every class.

Separately, a mark that merely describes the goods, their quality or their origin is refused under section 9 however clear the register is. The strongest marks are invented or arbitrary words; the weakest describe what is in the box.

• Applications filed in the last few days, which take time to appear.
• Unregistered marks in use, which have rights under passing-off law.
• Company names on the MCA register, domain names and social handles, which do not block a trade mark but signal who may object.
• International registrations designating India that are still in process.

A professional search adds these, grades each citation by risk, and proposes a specification that steers around the nearest marks. It comes with our trade mark registration at ₹1,000 per class plus the government fee; the fee structure is in our fees guide.