Intellectual Property
Trademarks, copyright, patents, designs, trade secrets — from clearance and filing through opposition and infringement enforcement.
Intellectual property is the part of corporate value most often under-protected and most easily eroded. Trademarks unfiled or filed in the wrong class. Patents that lapse on a renewal. Copyrights assigned to one entity and used by another. Trade secrets walked out of the door with a senior employee. The firm advises on IP across the full lifecycle — clearance, filing, prosecution, opposition, licensing, and enforcement — with the discipline of treating every IP asset as a commercial asset that must be both registered and defended.
What the firm does in this practice
Trademark clearance, filing, and prosecution
Comprehensive trademark search and clearance, filing strategy across classes, response to examination reports, hearing representation, opposition defence, and well-known mark designation under the Trade Marks Act, 1999.
Trademark opposition and rectification
Filing oppositions to third-party trademark applications, defending oppositions to client applications, rectification proceedings before the Registry, and the appellate path to the High Court.
Trademark infringement and passing-off
Civil suits in the Commercial Division of High Courts, ex parte injunctions, John Doe orders, customs recordals under the IPR Rules, and the criminal complaint architecture under Sections 102–104 of the Trade Marks Act.
Copyright registration and enforcement
Copyright registration where commercially useful, assignment and licensing documentation, infringement litigation, and the fair-dealing analysis under Section 52 of the Copyright Act, 1957.
Patent strategy and prosecution
Patentability analysis, application filing under the Patents Act, 1970, examination response, opposition (pre-grant and post-grant), and infringement litigation. Coordination with patent agents on technical drafting.
Designs, geographical indications, and trade secrets
Designs Act registration and infringement, geographical indication advisory, trade secret protection through contractual and behavioural architecture (the Indian framework remains contractual rather than statutory).
IP licensing, assignment, and franchising
Trademark and copyright licensing agreements, assignment deeds, royalty structures, franchise IP architecture, and the recordal of assignments and licences with the Registry.
IP due diligence in M&A
IP due diligence as part of M&A and PE transactions: ownership chain, registrations, encumbrances, infringement exposure, and the representation-and-warranty architecture that protects the buyer from undisclosed IP risk.
The view from the firm
Indian businesses still treat IP as a residual function, filed when convenient, defended when challenged. That posture survives until the moment it does not — usually at the moment of a brand-name conflict, an exit due diligence, or a public listing. The firm’s view is that IP is corporate infrastructure. It belongs in the same conversation as the company’s incorporation, its capitalisation, and its governance. A company without registered trademarks at scale is a company that has been built on borrowed time.
Trademark practice rewards two disciplines: pre-filing clearance and post-grant maintenance. Filing without clearance produces oppositions, refusals, and registered marks that cannot be enforced. Filing without maintenance produces lapses that destroy a decade of brand investment. The firm runs both as continuous workstreams for clients with active brand portfolios. The cost of the discipline is small. The cost of its absence is the brand itself.
IP litigation in India is more procedurally specific than ordinary commercial litigation. The Commercial Division of High Courts now hears most IP suits with the Commercial Courts Act discipline applied. Ex parte ad-interim injunctions are routinely granted where clearance and use are clean and the infringement is clear; rarely granted where the plaintiff’s own use is contestable. The firm’s IP litigation work begins where most counsel skip: with whether the plaintiff’s registration and use are clean enough to seek the injunction. Where they are not, the matter is reframed before filing.
Deeper references
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