Trademark registration in India and abroad
Filing is the easy part. What follows is a sequence of deadlines, some of them very short, where missing one can cost the application. This guide sets out the domestic route from Form TM-A to the registration certificate, who qualifies for the halved fee, and what registration actually gives you. It then covers filing outside India through the Madrid Protocol, and the separate position of a foreign brand owner designating India from the other direction.
The domestic route, in order
An application to register a trademark, a collective mark or a certification mark is made on Form TM-A. Section 18(1) allows it to be made by any person claiming to be the proprietor of a mark "used or proposed to be used", so India permits intent to use filings, not only filings for marks already in the market. Section 18(2) allows one application to cover several classes, with the fee payable in respect of each class.
Rule 14(1) keeps physical filing legally available, but the fee schedule prices it ten per cent above e-filing, and some acts, including expedited processing, are e-filing only. If the applicant does not carry on business in India, Form TM-A requires an address for service in India.
Examination
The Registry examines and, where it objects, issues a written examination report under Rule 33(2). Rule 33(4) gives one month from receipt of that report to respond, failing which the Registrar may treat the application as abandoned. One month is short and this is the most common cause of an application dying for no substantive reason. Rule 33(6) then provides a hearing where the response is not satisfactory, or where the applicant asks for one.
Missing the month is not automatically fatal, but do not plan around that. Rule 33(4) is permissive: the Registrar may treat the application as abandoned, and the courts have consistently required actual notice and a reasoned order before that happens. The genuinely unforgiving deadlines lie in the opposition rules below, where the language is self-executing: miss the counter-statement window and the application is deemed abandoned, with no notice step at all. Whether relief against those deeming provisions is available by an extension of time is a point on which the High Courts have divided, Delhi taking the strict view and others reading them as directory.
There is no statutory or rule based deadline for the Registry to issue the first examination report on an ordinary application. Its own standard operating process says only that examination is done expeditiously and serially by date of filing. That asymmetry, a hard one month clock on the applicant and no clock at all on the office, is worth understanding before setting expectations with anyone.
Advertisement and opposition
On acceptance the mark is advertised in the Trade Marks Journal, which is published weekly. Under section 21(1) and Rule 42, any person may oppose on Form TM-O within four months of the advertisement. That period is not extendable: the older structure of three months extendable by one was removed with effect from 2013. If an opposition is filed, the applicant has two months from receipt to file a counter-statement, failing which the application is deemed abandoned, and the opponent then has two months from service of the counter-statement to file evidence by affidavit.
Where no opposition is filed within the four months, or an opposition is filed and dismissed, Rule 53(1) requires the Registrar to enter the mark on the register.
Registration, and the date that actually matters
The certificate issues on Form RG-2 under the seal of the Trade Marks Registry. The term is ten years under section 25(1). Section 23(1) is the provision people get wrong: the mark is registered "as of the date of the making of the said application", and that date is deemed to be the date of registration. The ten years is therefore eaten into by however long prosecution took. A mark filed in January 2024 and registered in August 2026 falls due for renewal in January 2034, not August 2036. Where convention priority is claimed, the term runs from the priority date.
Who actually gets the halved fee
The concessional rate is not a startup benefit in the loose sense. Rule 2(1) of the Trade Marks Rules 2017 defines two categories, and they are wider than most readers expect.
Startup
An entity in India recognised as a startup by the competent authority under the Startup India initiative. For an Indian entity that means DPIIT recognition is required. For a foreign entity, recognition is not available and is not required: the rule lets a foreign entity that meets the Startup India turnover and age criteria qualify on a declaration to that effect. That is an unusual feature and it is routinely missed.
The underlying definition changed on 4 February 2026, when a DPIIT notification superseded the 2019 one. The turnover ceiling moved from ₹100 crore to ₹200 crore, Multi-State Cooperative Societies were added as eligible entities, and a Deep Tech category was created with a twenty year age limit and a ₹300 crore turnover ceiling against the standard ten years and ₹200 crore.
Because Rule 2 defines a startup by reference to recognition rather than by reproducing the criteria, the widened 2026 definition flows through to the trademark concessional fee automatically, with no amendment to the Trade Marks Rules. So entities with turnover between ₹100 crore and ₹200 crore, Multi-State Cooperative Societies, and deep tech entities between ten and twenty years old now qualify once recognised.
Small enterprise
Rule 2(1) defines this by cross reference to the MSMED Act 2006, and the drafting is worth reading carefully: the ceiling it uses is the one specified for a medium enterprise, not a small one. The concession therefore reaches businesses very much larger than the label suggests. The current notified ceilings, in force since 1 April 2025, are a composite test on both limbs: micro, investment up to ₹2.5 crore and turnover up to ₹10 crore; small, ₹25 crore and ₹100 crore; medium, investment up to ₹125 crore and turnover up to ₹500 crore.
There is a drafting problem underneath those figures, and it matters if you are near a ceiling. Rule 2 cross refers to clauses (a) and (b) of section 7(1) of the MSMED Act 2006, which have never been amended by Parliament and still read as investment only ceilings on the original 2006 manufacturing and services split. The operative composite ceilings above sit in notifications made under that Act, and the Trade Marks Rules carry no "as amended from time to time" formula to reach them. Whether the concession tracks the notified ceilings or the frozen statutory ones has not been litigated, and no Registry notice addresses it.
In practice the composite test governs, for a reason that has nothing to do with the drafting: the Registry asks for evidence of status, and the evidence it accepts is Udyam Registration, which is itself issued on the composite criteria. So the document the Registry looks at is generated by the composite test. Treat that as the working position rather than as a settled construction of the Rules.
The exposure is worth stating plainly, because it is asymmetric. If the concession is claimed and the Registry is not satisfied, the objection is to the fee, and the application is liable to be treated as filed at the ordinary fee. Where the filing date matters, that is a real risk to run for a saving of ₹4,500 per class, and the conservative course near a boundary is to file at the full fee. Note also that the startup limb turns on DPIIT recognition and carries none of this definitional difficulty, so a business that qualifies on both limbs should generally claim on the startup route.
Form TM-A itself says that in the case of a startup or small enterprise the "requisite certificate should be provided". For a startup that is the DPIIT recognition certificate. For a small enterprise the Rules do not name a document, and Udyam Registration is what is looked for in practice.
Expedited processing, and what it does and does not buy
Rule 34 allows a request for expedited processing on Form TM-M, made after the official application number has been received, so it is a post filing step and not a box on the application. The fee is ₹20,000 for an individual, startup or small enterprise and ₹40,000 for everyone else, per class per mark, e-filing only.
Two things are worth noting. First, under the 2017 Rules this is expedited processing, not merely expedited examination: it covers examination, consideration of the response, scheduling of a show cause hearing, publication and opposition. Second, the only timing norm anywhere in the Rules attaches to it: an expedited application is to be examined "ordinarily within three months" from submission.
What it does not buy is a shorter opposition window. The four months under section 21(1) runs regardless.
How long it takes, and why we do not publish an average
Plenty of Indian sites quote an end to end timeline. We do not, because there is no published service standard and no published average. The Registry's Annual Report gives volumes and disposals but no average or median time from filing to registration, its standard operating process sets no norm for ordinary examination, and the department's citizen's charter lists no trade mark service standard. Any range you see quoted is practitioner experience presented as a statistic.
There is exactly one official indicative figure, and it is worth knowing precisely because of how narrow it is. In a written reply to Parliament in September 2020 the government said a registration certificate is normally granted within seven months of filing where no objection is raised on examination and no opposition is filed, while expressly adding that there is no strict time limit because registration is a quasi-judicial process. That is a best-case figure for a clean application, not an average.
What can be stated with confidence is which parts of the timeline are fixed by law and which are queue:
| Stage | Fixed by law | Queue, with no published norm |
|---|---|---|
| Filing to first examination report | Nothing | The whole of it |
| Replying to an examination report | One month from receipt | |
| Examination under expedited processing | Ordinarily three months from submission | |
| Acceptance to publication in the Journal | Nothing | The whole of it |
| Opposition window | Four months from publication, not extendable | |
| Counter-statement | Two months from receipt of the notice | |
| Opponent's evidence | Two months from service of the counter-statement | |
| Hearing dates and contested opposition | Nothing | The whole of it |
Directionally, and as our own view rather than as a published figure: an uncontested application is dominated by the queue to examination plus the four month opposition exposure. An objected application adds a reply cycle and a hearing queue. A contested opposition, with pleadings, two rounds of evidence and a hearing, is measured in years rather than months.
Filing outside India: the Madrid Protocol
An Indian business that exports, or expects to, has two routes to protection abroad: file nationally in each country, or file one international application through the Madrid Protocol designating several. Chapter IVA of the Trade Marks Act, sections 36A to 36G, governs the Indian end.
- You need a basic Indian mark first. Section 36D allows an international application only where the applicant has already filed a domestic application under section 18 or obtained registration under section 23. India is the office of origin.
- The Registry certifies rather than examines. It certifies that the particulars in the international application correspond to those in the basic Indian mark, and forwards it to WIPO's International Bureau. Rule 65 requires electronic filing through the Trade Marks International Application System, Rule 66 certification in Form MM2(E), and a handling fee of ₹5,000 payable to the Indian Registry, e-filing only.
- WIPO's own fees are separate and in Swiss francs. A basic fee of CHF 653 for a mark not in colour or CHF 903 in colour, covering ten years; a complementary fee of CHF 100 for each designated country that does not charge its own individual fee; and a supplementary fee of CHF 100 for each class beyond three. Those are the standing schedule figures; what does change is the individual fee a particular country charges, and India's own is an example below.
- Central attack is the real risk. For five years from the date of the international registration, it stays dependent on the basic Indian mark. If the Indian application or registration is withdrawn, cancelled, refused or invalidated in that window, protection under the international registration falls with it, in every designated country at once. That includes a proceeding that merely started inside the five years and concluded later.
- Transformation is the rescue, and it is time limited. Where an international registration is cancelled at the office of origin's request, the former holder may file national applications in the designated countries and keep the international registration date, but only if filed within three months of the cancellation.
Convention priority
Separately from Madrid, section 154(2) allows a priority claim where the same mark was filed earlier in a convention country, provided the Indian application is filed within six months of that earlier filing. The claimed date is then deemed to be the date of application. The claim is made in Form TM-A itself, not on a separate form, and Rule 24 requires the certified priority document within two months of the Indian filing if it was not filed with the application. The six months is not extendable.
Coming the other way: a foreign brand owner protecting a mark in India
This section addresses a different reader from the rest of the guide: a business outside India that needs its mark protected here. If you are also establishing an entity in India, our India Entry guides cover that side; this is only about the mark.
You have the same two choices in reverse: a direct national filing on Form TM-A, or a Madrid designation of India. They are not equivalent, and the differences matter more than the fee comparison usually presented:
| Direct national filing | Madrid designation of India | |
|---|---|---|
| Fees | ₹9,000 per class by e-filing to the Indian Registry, or ₹4,500 where the foreign entity qualifies as a startup on declaration | WIPO's basic fee plus India's individual fee of CHF 83 per class, reduced from CHF 93 with effect from 28 June 2026 |
| Dependency | None. The Indian right stands alone. | Tied to the basic home mark for five years, so central attack reaches it |
| Registry deadline | None. There is no time limit on the Registry. | Hard: section 36E gives the Registrar eighteen months from receipt of WIPO's advice to refuse, after which protection extends automatically |
| Publication | The ordinary Trade Marks Journal | A separate part of the Journal, ordinarily within six months of receipt of the advice |
| Opposition by third parties | Under section 21, four months | Same, and an opposition is notified to WIPO as a provisional refusal |
| What you end up holding | An Indian registration certificate on Form RG-2 | A statement of grant of protection, not an Indian certificate |
| Renewal | To the Indian Registry on Form TM-R | Centralised at WIPO, ten year term with a six month grace period on surcharge |
Two further points specific to India as a designated country. India requires a declaration of intention to use, which not every Madrid member does. And India has declared that the minimum time limit to respond to a provisional refusal does not apply, so a refusal notice needs prompt local attention rather than the comfortable response window available elsewhere.
Once protected, section 36F gives an international registration designating India the same protection as an Indian registration, running from its registration date.
The rules behind all of this, and one pending change
The operative subordinate legislation is still the Trade Marks Rules 2017, unamended. We checked this three ways on 15 August 2026: the Registry's own rules page lists no amendment rules after 2017, WIPO Lex records the 2017 Rules as the latest instrument with no amending text, and the fee figures published by the Registry match the 2017 First Schedule exactly. So no 2025 or 2026 amendment has changed any form, fee or timeline in this guide.
A draft amendment was published for comment at the end of October 2025, but it deals with a code of conduct, a disciplinary committee and a misconduct complaint procedure for trademark agents. It would not touch filing forms, fees or prosecution timelines, and as at late August 2026 it has not been notified.
One trap to be aware of if you are reading elsewhere
The Startups Intellectual Property Protection scheme, which paid the fees of IP facilitators, expired on 31 March 2026: its own scheme document ran for three years from 1 April 2023, and no extension has been notified. The Startup India portal's intellectual property page still describes the scheme in the present tense with no mention of any expiry, and carries a "last updated" stamp of June 2023.
What survives is more important and is often confused with it: the 50 per cent concessional filing fee is not a SIPP benefit at all. It is the concessional rate in the First Schedule to the Trade Marks Rules 2017, ₹4,500 against ₹9,000, and it is unaffected by the scheme's expiry. The same logic applies to the 80 per cent patent fee rebate, which lives in the Patents Rules. SIPP only ever covered the facilitator's professional fees; both scheme documents said expressly that statutory fees were borne by the applicant.
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This page is general information, not professional advice. Indian trademark procedure, fees and the definitions that decide which fee you pay change frequently, and how any of it applies depends on your own facts. Take professional advice before acting on anything on this page. We are happy to be that adviser, but we do not act on a web page, ours or anyone else's, without one.