Most businesses discover their trade mark position at the worst possible moment — when a legal notice arrives from someone who registered first, or when a competitor starts selling under a name the business has used for fifteen years and never registered. Both problems are cheap to prevent and expensive to fix. A search before adopting a name costs very little; an injunction obtained against a business that has already printed its packaging costs it a season.

We act in intellectual property matters for manufacturers and traders, hospitality and education businesses, professionals and startups, and for individual authors and creators. Suits are conducted before the Commercial Courts and District Courts of Haryana and Punjab and before the Punjab & Haryana High Court at Chandigarh, with registry proceedings before the Trade Marks Registry, the Copyright Office and the Patent Office.

Trade Marks

A trade mark is the asset most businesses actually own and least often protect. We handle the whole life of a mark:

• Search and adoption — availability searches before a name, logo or label is adopted, and advice on how distinctive a proposed mark actually is, since a descriptive name is difficult to register and harder to enforce.
• Filing and prosecution — applications across the relevant classes, replies to examination reports raising objections on distinctiveness or on earlier conflicting marks, and hearings before the Registrar.
• Opposition — opposing a third party’s application after advertisement, and defending an opposition filed against ours, through counterstatement, evidence by affidavit and hearing.
• Rectification and cancellation — removal of marks registered wrongly or in bad faith, and cancellation on the ground of non-use where a registered mark has not been used for the statutory period.
• Maintenance — renewals, restoration of removed marks, recordal of assignments, licences and changes in name or address.

Where infringement occurs, the remedy is a suit for injunction, damages or an account of profits, delivery up of infringing material and costs. A business with an unregistered but long-used mark is not without remedy either — an action for passing off protects goodwill built by use, and the two are frequently combined in one suit. Interim relief matters more than final relief in these cases, and the application under Order XXXIX of the Code of Civil Procedure is where the case is effectively decided.

Copyright

Copyright arises on creation and does not require registration, though a registration is useful evidence and is worth obtaining for anything commercially significant. We act in disputes over literary and artistic works, software and source code, music and film, architectural drawings, photographs, course material and website content, and in the growing category of disputes over content copied from one commercial website onto another.

The work here is both civil and criminal. Civil suits for injunction and damages, and complaints and raids in piracy matters, where infringement of copyright is a criminal offence carrying imprisonment and fine. We also draft and advise on assignments, licences, publishing and commissioning agreements, and on ownership of work created by employees and by independent contractors, which are treated very differently and are the most common cause of dispute between a company and the agency or developer it engaged.

Patents and Designs

We advise on patentability and on what the Patents Act, 1970 excludes from protection, and act in the filing and prosecution of applications, replies to the first examination report, pre-grant and post-grant opposition, revocation, and infringement proceedings. Drafting of specifications and claims is done with a technical agent where the subject matter requires it, and we say so plainly rather than attempting it in-house.

Industrial designs — the shape, configuration, pattern or ornamentation of an article — are registrable under the Designs Act, 2000 and are frequently a better fit than a patent for a product whose value lies in its appearance. We handle design registration, cancellation proceedings and infringement suits, particularly for manufacturers whose product design is being copied by local competitors.

Counterfeiting and Enforcement

Registration is only useful if it is enforced. We conduct enforcement work end to end: cease and desist notices, civil suits with applications for interim injunction, appointment of a local commissioner to enter premises and seize infringing stock before it can be removed, and orders against unidentified defendants where the infringers are not known at the time of filing. On the criminal side, the Trade Marks Act makes falsification and false application of a mark an offence, and we assist in complaints and police action where the scale of counterfeiting justifies it.

Two enforcement routes are underused and worth naming. Recordal of a registered trade mark with the customs authorities allows counterfeit consignments to be intercepted at import. And takedown action against listings on e-commerce marketplaces and against infringing websites and social media accounts is often faster and cheaper than a suit, particularly for a brand facing many small infringers rather than one large one.

Domain Names and Online Brand Disputes

We act in disputes over domain names registered in bad faith, through the arbitration procedure applicable to .in domains and through the corresponding international procedure for generic domains, and in court proceedings where the domain is being used to divert customers or to impersonate a business. Impersonation on social media, misuse of a business name in search advertising and fake listings are dealt with in the same way — with the platform first, and in court where the platform will not act.

Confidential Information and Contracts

India has no dedicated trade secrets statute, so confidential business information is protected through contract and through equitable remedies. We draft and enforce non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements, employment clauses concerning company data and client lists, and agreements with vendors and consultants who receive proprietary information, and we act in proceedings where an employee or a former partner has taken data, drawings or customer records to a competitor. We also draft the commercial agreements that sit around intellectual property — assignments, licences, distribution and franchise arrangements.

Procedure and Timelines

Intellectual property suits are commercial disputes, tried under the Commercial Courts Act, 2015 with its stricter timelines for written statements, disclosure of documents and case management. Except where urgent interim relief is sought, a suit must first go through pre-institution mediation, which is a point to plan for rather than discover after filing. Appeals and rectification matters that formerly lay before the Appellate Board are now heard by the High Court.

The registry deadlines are unforgiving and no extension is available for most of them:

• A reply to an examination report must be filed within the period stated in the report, failing which the application is treated as abandoned
• Opposition to an advertised trade mark must be filed within four months of advertisement
• A counterstatement must be filed within two months of receiving the notice of opposition
• Trade mark registration runs for ten years and must be renewed, with restoration available only for a limited period afterwards
• Post-grant opposition to a patent must be filed within one year of the grant being published
• In infringement, delay in approaching the court weakens the case for an interim injunction even where the right is clear

Documents We Usually Require

• The mark, logo or work in the form in which it is used, and the date use began
• Registration certificates or application numbers, if already filed
• Evidence of use — invoices, packaging, advertisements, price lists, dated photographs, turnover figures
• Samples or photographs of the infringing product, listing or website, with the date recorded
• Any notice received, and correspondence with the other side
• Agreements with employees, contractors or agencies, in ownership disputes
• Constitution documents of the business in whose name the right is held

Working With Us

We tell clients early whether a mark is worth fighting for or worth changing, because a weak or descriptive mark is often better replaced at year two than defended at year six. Where a business is on the receiving end of a notice, we assess whether the claim is genuine before responding, since a considerable share of the notices sent in this field are sent to see who folds. And we prefer to do the cheap work first — search, register, record, contract — so that enforcement, when it becomes necessary, is straightforward.

Vaqeelsaab acts in intellectual property matters from our offices at Sector 27, Panchkula and at the District Court, Jagadhri, appearing before the Commercial and District Courts of Haryana and Punjab and the Punjab & Haryana High Court at Chandigarh. To discuss a mark, a work or a notice you have received, call +91 94160 09800 or write to info@vaqeelsaab.com.