Delhi High Court stays trademark abandonment orders

The Delhi High Court has stayed a decision by India’s Trade Marks Registry that classified more than 100,000 trademark applications as abandoned.

In a judgment issued yesterday, April 5, the court stayed all abandonment orders passed on or before March 20.

Last month, the registry abandoned more than 165,000 applications.

Yesterday, WIPR reported that the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, which administers the registry, had given applicants until April 30 to file responses to the abandonments.

Also yesterday, the Indian Intellectual Property Lawyers’ Association (IPLA) filed a writ asking the court to rule on the case that day. Judge Manmohan Singh accepted the seriousness of the situation and granted the writ.

Sudeep Chatterjee, partner at law firm Singh & Singh Lall & Sethi, whose founding partner Chander Lall is president of the IPLA, said: “After hearing the matter at length, the judge was pleased to stay the order passed whereby the abandonment of the trademark applications after March 20, 2016 stands stayed.

“The court has further directed the registry not to pass any further orders of abandonment without giving due notice to the affected parties,” he added.

Usually, examination reports that have been issued are uploaded to the office’s website. An applicant then has 30 days from the date that it receives the report to respond to any objection.

But certain reports—some of which were years old—were allegedly not dispatched to applicants until January this year. On March 30, the registry abandoned applications for which it received no response.

In a blog post by law firm Selvam & Selvam it is claimed that 166,771 applications were abandoned in March alone, compared to 4,192 in February.