How to Trademark a Phrase or Word

While with us, one needs not to bother anymore about how to trademark a word or any other indications, for the purpose of giving a unique and striking identification to his products or services, in the Indian or worldwide marketplace. Our prestigious and fast progressive IPR law firm of India is now reputed worldwide for its full gamut of expert and swift services rendered for registration and protection of all categories of intellectual property, at national and international levels. In ours this very informative, creative, and generous web article, we are providing detailed information exclusively regarding how to trademark a phrase or any other signs or figures, with any pertinent zonal trademarks office of India, in order to provide a distinct and impeccable identity and prominence to one's products or services in the vast and fast progressive Indian market. As a unique and scintillating trademark or service mark is immensely supportive to huge and ever-growing popularity, profitability, and cherished growth of the business of a business entity, ours internationally renowned trademark lawyers deliver the whole range of efficient, flawless, responsible, and economical services for perfect and prompt registration and protection of trademarks and service marks in all across India and countries of the world over.

A Trademark or Service Mark is essentially required by a company or firm for the ultimate purpose of giving unique identification to its products or services in the concerned regional, national, or international marketplace, where products and services of other companies and firms are also available. Trademarks are commonly and particularly used for identifying products of companies which are engaged in various economic fields, and the service marks are especially used for distinguishing services of the service-proving companies or firms. Again, a trademark and service mark can be any sign, word, phrase, figure, or any other indications, which the concerned company or service-providing firm considers highly elegant for distinguishing its product or service from the products and services of other business or service entities present in the same relevant marketplace. Besides, to separate a trademark from the trademarks used in all other economic fields, trademarks are classified into 34 discrete classes, depending on the type of products in these commercial or industrial fields. For example, the trademark class-13 signifies all those trademarks which are related with explosives and firearms. Similarly, there are 11 classes of service marks in the trademark classification list (commonly used by all international trademark treaties and conventions, and most of the national trademark offices of the world). The service mark class-38, for example, represents services in the telecommunication field especially.

Application for Trademark Registration in India

As per the business priorities, a trademark or service mark, can be registered with any desired national or international trademarks registry office. For the national-level registrations, there are national trademark offices in individual countries; and for international-level registrations, there are international offices which act in accordance with international treaties like TRIPS Agreement, Berne Convention, Madrid Protocol, and the European Community Trademark (CTM). Every international trademark treaty has a large number of countries as its parties. Here, we are mainly concerned with providing information about how to register a word or phrase in any part of entire India.

In India, there are five regional trademark registry offices located in Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, and Ahmedabad, which register, regulate, and protect all categories of trademarks and service marks as per the Indian federal trademark law represented by the new Trade Marks Act of 1999 and the Trade Marks Rules of 2002. Each of these zonal trademark offices has a well-defined jurisdictional area in connection with trademark registration and protection, which covers several surrounding States and UTs, in addition to the State it is located in. Thus, depending on the location of a company or firm active in any economic field, any of these regional trademark offices of India is targeted regarding trademark registration, renewal, or opposition. Various requirements and the entire procedure for registering a trademark or service mark in any part of India, are described in the section below separately.

Application Filing and Registration Procedure

To register any newly created and magnificent trademark, which has been found entirely unique and unobjectionable through Trademark Search within India, an application is to be filed in Form TM-1, with the recommended zonal trademarks office. Today, opulent facilities for brisk and fully secured e-filing of trademark applications, are also available. After receipt of the perfectly completed application form for trademark registration, the concerned regional trademarks office will make thorough and scrupulous official examination and verification of the filed application and enclosed documents, in order to declare its acceptability for proper registration. If the office gets satisfied with the perfectness and uniqueness of the filed trademark or service mark, then, the same is published in the Indian Trade Marks Journal for a period of three months, to know views of the owners of all trademarks or service marks which have been registered or filed previously in any part of India for doing business in the field of the applicant company. If no objection is raised by any of them within these three months, then the submitted trademark is finally registered. And, in case there are objections raised (through Form TM-5), then, resolving all such affairs is pre-requisite for acceptability of the trademark application.

The most important documents to be enclosed with the application for trademark registration, together with the prescribed registration fee, are --- a soft copy of the newly created trademark or service mark in JPEG format; name and detailed address

of the applicant entity; all relevant trade-related information of the applicant entity; satisfactory information about the proposed trademark or service marks and its Class category; information about any previous application made in countries abroad for registration of the current trademark; date of the very first usage of the proposed trademark;, etc.

After filing the application to trademark a phrase or word, with any zonal trademarks office of India, the certificate of trademark registration is obtainable well within a year in normal case. But, in case the filed trademark or service mark is not entirely different and indisputable, then, some more time is certain to be elapsed in the registration process. Only after proper registration of a trademark, the symbol ® [an encircled capital R] can be authoritatively used on the product by the company. During the time-period when the trademark has been filed for registration, and is currently under registration process, the company can use the symbol TM or SM for distinguishing its product or service, respectively. Again, the prescribed registration fee by government for any newly invented trademark or service mark, with ay desired trademarks office of India is at present INR-3,500/-. This amount of fee does not include the charges of trademark consultation, charges for trademark search and application filing, and charges for trademark prosecution service such as for tackling any raised trademark opposition.

Any newly registered trademark or service mark is recognized and protected by the Indian Government only for a period of ten years, counted from the date of its registration. To extend recognition, validation, and governmental protection to the registered trademark, utilized are regular trademark renewals at the end of every 10-year period. If a trademark is not renewed punctually within ten years of its first registration or previous renewal, the said trademark will then be discarded from the Trademarks Register, and no any rights will be given to the owner of the trademark for uses of the trademark for all commercial and protective purposes, in any part of India. The application for timely trademark renewal is made in Form TM-12, together with the renewal fee amounting to INR-5,000/-, and is submitted to the regional trademarks office concerned.