Trademark Overview protect your brand from search to renewal.

A trademark is the legal identity of a brand — a unique word, logo, slogan, shape, sound, or combination that distinguishes the goods or services of one business from those of every other business. In India, trademarks are governed by the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the Trade Marks Rules, 2017, and are administered by the Trade Marks Registry under the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks. A registered trademark gives the proprietor an exclusive statutory right to use the mark in respect of the registered goods or services, and to prevent others from using identical or deceptively similar marks.

For a brand-led business — whether a consumer product, a digital app, a professional services firm, or an enterprise B2B brand — the trademark is often the single most valuable intangible asset. It is what allows the business to build goodwill, charge a brand premium, license to partners, defend against copycats, and raise capital on the strength of a recognised name. Yet many businesses operate for years without filing a trademark application, only to discover during a funding round, an acquisition, or an infringement that the mark they have built equity in is unregistered, vulnerable, or already claimed by someone else.

Our trademark practice supports founders, brand owners, and in-house legal teams through every stage of the trademark lifecycle — preliminary public-records search and clearance opinion, drafting and filing of the trademark application in the right classes under the Nice Classification, prosecution before the Trade Marks Registry including responses to examination reports and show-cause hearings, defending and prosecuting oppositions, rectification and cancellation proceedings, renewal once every ten years, assignment and licensing, and infringement and passing-off support before courts and forums. The objective is a registered, defensible, and commercially active trademark portfolio.