Time Taken for Trademark Registration in India Can Be Reduced With the Expedited Examination

In India, there are approximately 2 to 3 lakh trademark applications pending to be registered. It is almost impossible to get the trademark registered within a year's time. Due to its technicality and legal aspect, it is very important that every application be analyzed and scrutinized properly before any type of registration is granted for the same. If anything wrong happens and the ministry ends up giving the trademark registration to an application which was not adhering to the legal aspects, then this will go against the law. It is then impossible to reverse the action and can have adverse impacts on the day to day business of the registered trademarks.

Once you apply for Trademark Registration, it is first examined and an examination report is issued. If the ministry finds any discrepancies with the application, it raises its objection in the report. Now, this is the first major step involved as the ministry does its checking and authorization of the application. There many new applications being made every day. Thus the queue for your application being examined is very long. Thus, it normally takes about 8 - 12 months for any trademark application to be examined and issued an examination report. This time may vary as per the type of trademark.

In case you are in a hurry and want to speed up your application, there is a formal way to do it. The Ministry has provided with an Expedited Trademark Registration scheme. Under this scheme, you can by-pass the queue for getting your trademark application examined, and thus reduce the total time taken to register the trademark relatively. This means that the 8 - 12 month time required for getting your Trademark Examined, is reduced to 1 month. But, this is done for an additional cost with respect to the Government Fees to be paid while registering the Trademark. Generally, a normal application requires about Rs 4,000/- as government fees to be paid in order to officially file a Trademark. But in order to be expedited, this Government Fee is raised to Rs 20,000/-.

Only an already filed application can be expedited. Thus, you have to first file the application by paying the Rs 4,000/- Government fee, and then expedite it by paying the additional Rs 20,000/- Government Fee. This may sound costly, but it helps you get tremendous advantage over your competition when you need your Trademark to be registered immediately.

Although, there are limited slots for expedition of trademarks. The Government has told the ministry to take only a limited amount of applications per year for expedition. This has done in order to be able to expedite the applications, otherwise there might be a long queue for expedition of applications as well, given the amount of applications and applicants there are.

Expedition of Trademark can be done by filing the TM-63 form on the Government of India's Trademark Filing portal. This form has been allotted for the purpose of filing expedition requests with the ministry.