Why should your trademark be unique and distinctive?

Our personal experience It has been quite an interesting journey for all of us since we started our career into intellectual property.  Each of our lawyers encounter on a day to day basis clients from different levels and parts of society involved in different businesses. Counseling and brainstorming a client is quite a task which consumes seventy percentage (70%) of our lawyers' time before proceeding with a trademark application.  We must admit that we, at our very best, manage to convince 60% of the clients to not go for marks that are directly or indirectly infringing on existing registered marks or well-known trademarks. Some clients are persistent on their stance even when advised by us about the potential consequences of objections...

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Trademark Bullying – are you being bullied?

What is trademark bullying? Bullying, in general, means an act of intimidating a weaker person to do or not to do something.  This term is quite familiar to most of us, especially in the context of school, colleges, workplaces, etc.  Bullying seems to be an epidemic and has invaded the trademark industry as well.  Normally, well-informed clients and/or attorneys do not engage in this behavior. Trademark bullying, in our own words, means a form of threat, instigation, or communication initiated by, in most cases, a registered trademark owner against others who generally may not be registered owners, to do or to stop doing something that is, without any reasonable cause, likely to or is infringing the trademark of registered trademark...

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After 10 years Isohunt closes down a bit early, survived many Copyright battles!

Many of the file sharing and torrent websites have been losing their battles against Copyright owners.  One such was Megaupload, which was shut down a few months ago.  Isohunt.com has fought many battles and somehow pulled off for about 10.5 years. Isohunt has posted a notice on its website that it has closed a day earlier than required to avoid being a part of an attempt to archive it.  Isohunt was first sued by a movie production house in way back in 2006 and the case has reached a settlement with the MPAA and Isohunt agreed to both pay $110 million in damages and to close down in seven days. After a group named Archiveteam said they were preparing to make...

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In “Advocates as Patent Agents” Case- IPO says “it has been appealed”

SP Chockalingam vs. Controller of Patents March 15, 2013 was a much-awaited date for the legal fraternity when Honourable Madras High Court pronounced a verdict on a writ Petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, seeking for issuance of a Writ of Declaration, that the amendment introduced to Section 126 of the Patents Act, 1970, by Section 67 (a) of the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005 (Act 15 of 2005) as illegal, unconstitutional, ultra vires and void. After several months have passed by, our Indian Patent Office (IPO) has not made a public statement as to whether it was going to appeal or implement the decision, to our knowledge.  In the interim, many advocates were curious to know...

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Different stages of trademark application in India

A trademark application after it is filed has to see through several stages of scrutiny before it is finally registered.  So, the applicant and or the applicant's counsel needs to diligently follow up with every stage of the application.  After the implementation of online filing, a.k.a. e-filing of trademarks, objections and other notifications are published online. Some of the common stages are as given below: 1)  Online New Application or New Application  - indicates that the application is filed and/or the data entry has been done. 2) Send to Vienna Codification - only applies to non-text trademarks, containing logo or label or artwork.  This means your non-text trade mark is being assigned with codes as per vienna codification 3) Formalities...

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