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15 April 2016Trademarks

India offers chance to reinstate abandoned trademark applications

India’s Trade Marks Registry has said aggrieved applicants will have a chance to reinstate more than 160,000 trademark applications that it classified as abandoned.

In a notice published this week the registry said the abandonment orders have been “kept in abeyance”.

Last week, WIPR reported that 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.

The Delhi High Court then stayed the abandonment orders after the Indian Intellectual Property Lawyers’ Association filed a writ asking the court to rule on the case.

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 165,000 applications for which it received no response.

In its notice, published on Wednesday, April 13, the registry said it was granting an opportunity to reinstate the applications.

“The aggrieved applicants or their agents can file replies to examination reports either through comprehensive e-filing services … or through email,” the notice said.

It added: “In cases where replies have already been filed and the office has erroneously treated applications as abandoned, a representation with all relevant information and documentation is to be sent through email.”

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7 April 2016   The Delhi High Court has stayed a decision by India’s Trade Marks Registry that classified more than 100,000 trademark applications as abandoned.
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5 April 2016   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.