India offers help after thousands of trademarks ‘wrongly’ rejected

The Indian government has given some trademark applicants the chance to claim that their application was wrongly abandoned after more than 100,000 filings were allegedly thrown out by the country’s Trade Marks Registry.

Yesterday, April 4, the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, which administers the registry, said that applicants could have until April 30 to file responses to the abandonments.

It comes after more than 165,000 applications were reportedly abandoned by the registry last month.

In a statement, the office said: “If it is found that indeed parties are adversely affected by it, then the office will take appropriate action necessary to remedy it.”

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.

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

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.

“I’ve been hearing of cases where the actual post with the reports was never received; cases where replies to the examination reports have been filed and the marks have still been abandoned,” the blog post said.

The office added: “In case any applicant or his authorised agent considers that his/her application has been erroneously treated as abandoned, he/she should send a representation with all details along with sufficient documentary evidence substantiating his/her case.”