Trademark Search for Entrepreneurs: Registering Your Brand

Trademark Search for Entrepreneurs: Registering Your Brand

Building a brand takes a lot of time, effort and capital.  As a result, you must ensure you possess the rights to use your brand’s logo, tagline, product shape and packaging, sound, fragrance, colour combinations, and anything else that gives it a distinct identity. A trademark is a type of intellectual property that differentiates your product or services from other competitors in the market.

Trademarks are classified as intellectual property and therefore protected from infringement. Trademarks and their rights are protected by the Trademark Act 1999. This act provides legal remedies to trademark owners in case of infringement, such as the ability to seek damages and injunctions. The Trademark Act also establishes a trademark registration system, allowing owners to officially protect their marks and establish exclusive rights.

Registering your trademark ensures that no one impersonates your product or service in the market, removing the need to rebrand. Additionally, registering a trademark in India is essential to protect your intellectual property and secure your rights. Every aspiring entrepreneur should be aware of the numerous advantages of trademark registration.

As a result, reading this article will help you better comprehend the value of trademark registration and trademarks in broad.

Conducting a Trademark Search

A trademark search can be performed on the Indian Trademark Registry database maintained by the government or on a website run by a third-party service provider. It establishes whether a proposed trademark is used with particular goods and services. Through a trademark search in India, it is possible to locate numerous identical wordmarks and names in a particular phonetically similar class.

All trademark applications submitted to the Registrar of Trademarks in India are included in the database of trademarks, along with trademarks that have been licenced, notified, challenged, or expired. The Comptroller General’s website provides access to an electronic trademark search database for patent designs and trademarks that professionals and laypeople may use to look for a trademark. A trademark search on the trademark database will yield pertinent information about the trademark search query.

Benefits of conducting a trademark search

A trademark search can benefit people or companies wishing to register a trademark in several ways. 

• Initially, it enables you to ascertain whether your proposed trademark is eligible for registration rapidly. 
• If a claim of bad faith or wilful infringement is made, a defence may be supported by the counsel’s clear-headed and well-supported clearance opinion.
• By protecting you from investing in a brand that will not be protected by a trademark, this can save you both time and money.
• A trademark search might also assist in finding any earlier marks that can be confusingly similar to your trademark. Avoiding prospective trademark infringement cases, which may be expensive and time-consuming to resolve, may depend on knowing this information. 
• The understanding gained from the search report and analysis may help attorneys prepare trademark applications that reduce the possibility of refusals or oppositions by third parties at the trademark office.

How to conduct a trademark search?

• At the Indian trademark database link, one can conduct a free online trademark search in the Trademark Registry India.
• There are three categories for trademark searches:

• Wordmark Search: Use the ‘wordmark’ option to perform a wordmark search in the Indian trademark database by typing the proposed trademark’s keywords into the box. Use prefix strategies such as “Starts With,” “Contains,” or “Match With.”
• Phonetic search: Except for the prefix technique, phonetic search uses the same methodology as wordmark search to identify related phonemes in words.
• Vienna code lookup: In visual arts, a six-digit number called the Vienna code is used to search for device markings, with the results shown in a table.

• Type in the relevant trademark class. Each of the 45 trademark classes corresponds to a different group of products or services. Only the class for which it was registered will be relevant to a trademark or trademark application.
• For the trademark search to start, click search. 

Therefore, while registering a trademark, completing a trademark search is essential. It would help if you utilized Trademark Search Online to do a trademark search due to the enormous number of firms in India, as you might be violating a trademark that already exists and has been registered.

After a search, the trademark may be submitted if no identical trademarks have been found.

Registering Your Trademark

A company must register a trademark to prevent unauthorized use of its logo by outside parties. A registered trademark offers a company its unique identity and protects its reputation as a trusted brand. Any legal rulings will be to the party’s advantage that registered the trademark.

A trademark may be used for ten years following registration and, if the owner renews it on schedule, for as long as the trademark owner’s business is in operation. Suppose a third party attempts to copy or pass off their products or services using the reputation and goodwill of another person’s registered brand. In that case, only a registered trademark may launch a lawsuit against that third party for infringement.

How to register your trademark?

• It’s time to get your trademark application ready after searching and verifying the name you wish to trademark. You can register a name that is already in use for commercial or that you intend to use in the future.
• Various documents are frequently needed while registering a trademark online. These may consist of:

• A certificate of incorporation if a trademark is registered under the name of a company or an LLP.
• The partnership agreement is if the trademark has been filed under a partnership firm.
• PAN card of the designated signatory.
• Aadhaar card of the designated signatory.
• Your attorney must sign Form TM-48 to register your trademark with the trademark registration on your behalf.
• Logo, to ensure that the registration covers all the trademark’s colours, avoid using a black-and-white logo.

• Check all the documents once you have uploaded them. After that, the trademark application form will be completed and filed with the supporting documentation. 
• After that, the application is sent to the trademark registration for review.
• The trademark registration looks into any possible violation, and an objection hearing is held. Subsequently, your trademark will be registered in 1-2 years if no objections are filed.

Benefits of trademark registration

• You can legally protect your brand by registering your trademark. It grants you the sole right to use your trademark with your products or services.
• A trademark aids in brand identification and helps clients recognise your good or service.
• You may have a competitive edge over businesses without trademarks if you have a registered trademark.
• Your company may benefit greatly from a trademark. Your trademark could raise the worth of your company if you ever decide to sell it.
• A registered trademark can be licenced to other companies, generating extra income for your company.

Protecting Your Trademark

The Trademarks Act 1999 safeguards trademark rights in India. The TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement required India to fulfil certain international responsibilities, which is why the Act was primarily implemented. In India, ownership of trademarks is determined by who has been using the mark for the longest time, in contrast to patents and other intellectual property rights. 

In contrast to registered trademarks, however, unregistered trademarks only receive limited legal protection. Consequently, even while the Act does not require trademark registration, it is nonetheless preferable to do so to have comprehensive legal protection for the trademark.

How to enforce your trademark rights?

In addition to allowing the trademark applicant the only right to use the mark, trademark protection also forbids any unauthorized or illegal use of the mark by any third party. As a result, the trademark owner can sue trademark infringers for passing off or infringement to defend their rights. The Trade Marks Act of 1999 (the TM Act) allows for enforcement through passing-off and trademark infringement lawsuits. 

A trademark registration serves as prima facie proof of ownership and validity, offers legal protection, aids in preventing unauthorized use of the brand by third parties, and enables the filing of infringement lawsuits. For an unregistered trademark, these are not accessible.

Trademark infringement and how to prevent it?

According to Section 29 of the Trademark Act of 1999, the use of a trade mark that is identical to, or confusingly similar to, a registered trademark by a person who does not belong to the registered proprietor of the trade mark or a registered user thereof constitutes trademark infringement, for which the registered proprietor may seek redress.  

The following conditions must be met to bring a lawsuit or case in India for trademark infringement:

• The registered trademark owner or the person who filed the lawsuit for infringement must be the plaintiff.
• The defendant, the party being sued for trademark infringement, must employ a mark that is confusingly close to or identical to the plaintiff’s trademark.
• The defendant must use the mark that the plaintiff has registered as being used in connection with the products or services.
• The defendant must use the mark intentionally rather than accidentally during the business.

The district court where the plaintiff resides or conducts business should receive the lawsuit for trademark infringement.

Conclusion

A trademark is whatever you employ to differentiate your products from rival companies, including words, colours, logos, object shapes, sounds, and three-dimensional designs. Businesses can prohibit others from utilizing identical marks that can confuse customers or lessen their brand recognition by registering their trademarks. Trademarks also act as valuable assets that may be licenced or sold, raising the value of a company’s portfolio of brands.  A trademark classification is the most significant classification regarding services and goods. To categorize the creation of products and services, various classes are utilized.

Many organizations use external service providers to do their trademark searches because they believe conducting their own searches will expose them to needless risks. In addition to saving you the time required to do these searches yourself, hiring outside trademark search specialists will generally result in much more thorough searches than if done internally.

Therefore, Kanakkupillai is very helpful in assisting you in defending your trademark registration. They have a group of skilled professionals on staff who focus on trademark registration and are familiar with the related legal requirements and processes. Until the registration is finished, we will keep you informed about the procedure and keep an eye out for any alerts from the Trademark Registry. With their knowledge, Kanakkupillai can help you through the full process without any fuss, ensuring your trademark is properly secured.