Trademark - Impact of increase in fee

Trademark after fee increase - a Legal Luxury

India is a developing country and still people are unaware of the Rights related with the Intellectual properties. Once considered as the legal luxury, Trademark is now considered as the basic requirement of the Business in India. In Indian business scenario importance of the trademark is increasing but still the Small and Medium Scale entrepreneurs are yet to be aware of the importance of Trademark in business.

 As per the draft Rules the Government has proposed to increase the fee by twice for trademark registration and for physical filing the applicant is required to pay Rs. 800/- extra. Government has recently increase the trademark registration fee from Rs. 3,500/- to Rs. 4,000/-[1].

Sudden rise in the fee by double will cause negative impact in public at large and some grave consequences will be as follows:

a.      Burden of Extra fee:

Increase in fee by double (existing Rs. 4,000/- per Trademark to Rs. 8,000/- per Trademark) will cause an extra burden on public at large who are interested in registration of their mark with the Trademark Registry.

b.      Downfall in number of Registration:

Indian Trademark registry has received 202,444 Trademark Applications in comparison to the 1,880,000 Trademark Application received by the China in the year 2013.[2] In BRICS countries India stands at second position after the China, however, in international scenario India is much behind China.

This sudden increase in fee by double will demoralize the intention of people to get their mark registered.

c.      Extra burden to SME

In the diversified economy of India SME are growing rapidly and it is the obligation of government to give extra benefits and relaxation to the SME’s. A large number of small scale organizations cannot pay the increase fee i.e. Rs. 8,000/- due to which SME’s not only stop applying for registration of their mark but also fail to get their right on their hard earned Intellectual Property Right.

d.      Depriving public from getting registration

Increase in fee will deprive a mazor section of society who cannot pay Rs. 8,800/-to the Government for the registration of their mark. Entrepreneur who are at the starting stage of business will hesitate to file the trademark application due to the huge cost involved.

          

It will be in the interest of the Public that Government take the increase in fee back and do not implement the same. Increase in cost will make the trademark a legal luxury.

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[1] As per Notice bearing number CG/PublicNotice/2014-15/51 dated 07th August, 2014 and consequent to the notification in the official gazette of India issued by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion) dated 01st August, 2014 (G.S.R. 523(E)).

[2] WIPO statistics database, October 2014.