Often we see that people are very much focused on their Trademark protection and more and more people are coming forward to safeguard their brand name through Trademark registration in India.
It is commonly understood that in order to protect your brand name you need to apply for a trademark in relevant class. For instance you are operating a pharmaceutical company and want to launch a new medicine you need to apply for a trademark in class 5 of the trademark classification in India. However, there might be an ancillary classes related to a product as well. That means that your product falls in two or more classes.
In order to provide a complete protection to your Trademark you may need to file for Trademark registration in more than one class. Let us take an example to understand this better, suppose you have proprietary software and also provide this software as a service based on licensing or subscription model you need to register your mark in 2 classes, basically one for software as a product in class 9 and one for the software as a service in class 42.
Than only you may able to obviate the probability of potential misuse of a brand in all the avenues, as the brand grows this is a common strategy used by the infringers and competitors to get the registration in a similar class as it is obvious that the trademark right is given solely for the class applied, therefore, in order to overcome this problem it is always advisable to apply for trademark registration in all the peripheral classes as well.
Apart, from the above strategy, big companies very particular about their brand values tent to apply for trademark registration in multiple classes or previously by extensive marketing used to try to establish their brand as a well –known trademark.
Well known trademarks are the marks which are so known to the public and are so big and establish that no matter what products they deal with the ordinary consumer may tend to confuse the origin of any product or service with them.
Initially, this concept of well known trademark was the prerogative of the courts, In case there arise any infringing activity and the parties to the case claimed or focused over the well known status of the mark, the Court may at its own will may declare the mark to be a well-known mark and publish the same on ipindia website as well.
But, after the notification of recent Trademark Rules 2017 , the court has made it clear that any applicant may apply for inclusion of their trademark as a well known mark by virtue of payment of applicable fees of 1 lakh along with the relevant documents.
###Benefits of a Well known Trademark
As soon as your mark is declared well known you do have a greater extension of protection by law in case a well known mark, even though not registered in a particular class will surely enjoy protection against infringement and passing off for the brand name.
A well known mark not just safeguards the mark within the territories but also safeguard you and helps you in establishing Trans border reputation.
