The Hindu Business Line : Do the lacunae in IP protection deter investors?

Chennai, March 17 In the Richard Gere case, the Chief Justice rued, ‘Such cases bring bad name to country.’ While issues such as of Shilpa Shetty may continue to hog limelight in popular media, there is a factor that should worry businesses, especially the multinationals: IP (intellectual property) protection.

“One thing that brings a lot of bad publicity to any country is the way IP (intellectual property) law is administered,” says Mr Raja Pannir Selvam, an advocate practising IP law in Chennai.

“There are continuing instances of domain hijacking of well-known trademarks in the cyberspace, and blatant dilution or infringement of popular brands being registered as trademarks in India,” he adds, speaking to Business Line.

Much like Gere, one finds then a multinational having to defend its intellectual property rights. The Indian Trademarks Act, 1999 provides for ‘Relative Grounds’ on which a trademark application can be rejected by the examiner of trademarks, explains Mr Selvam. One of the relative grounds on which a trademark application can be refused is ‘the prior existence of similar or conflicting marks.

“However it is quite shocking to see several similar or conflicting marks and specially well-known marks being advertised in the trademark journals,” he observes. “The ‘reason’ cited however here is that the mark is advertised as ‘Advertised Before Acceptance’ meaning that though the examiner is not satisfied with the explanation stated by the applicant, the mark is allowed to be advertised, and later registered, provided that no objection is raised by any interested person within four months of such advertisement.” As a consequence, there are many negative effects, elaborates Mr Selvam. “When a conflicting or similar mark is registered after the expiry of four months of advertisement the register of trademarks becomes impure; and this leads to unnecessary and expensive opposition/cancellation/litigation procedure between the parties overloading the already heavily burdened courts.” More worryingly, says Mr Selvam, when intellectual property law goes through these phases of field reality, the global investor wonders if his intellectual property would be safeguarded in India at an affordable cost.

“We can mitigate this problem through an effective and continual training of our trademark examiners, the way it is done in the developed countries,” suggests Mr Selvam.

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