A brand that is used but never registered, and a licence that was allowed to lapse, are both liabilities that only become visible when somebody looks — an investor, a marketplace, a customer running vendor diligence, or a competitor who registered the mark first.
This practice group secures and defends what a business owns in the way of trade marks and copyright, and obtains and maintains the statutory registrations it needs in order to operate lawfully.
Intellectual Property Matters
Trade mark rights in India follow use, but registration is what makes them practically enforceable — against an infringer, before an e-commerce platform, at customs, and in the eyes of an acquirer. Most disputes we see would have been avoided by a search before adoption and a filing in the right classes.
We handle trade mark and copyright work end to end: searching, filing, prosecuting the application through examination and opposition, appearing at hearings, and maintaining and assigning the registration afterwards.
- Availability searches before adoption of a mark, and advice on registrability and on the classes to be filed in
- Filing of trade mark applications, including series and multi-class applications, and applications for collective and certification marks
- Replies to examination reports and objections, and appearance at show-cause hearings before the Registrar
- Opposition and rectification proceedings, both as opponent and in defence, including evidence and counterstatement
- Renewals, restoration, assignments, transmissions, licensing and recordal of changes
- Copyright registration for literary, artistic, musical and software works, and advice on ownership and assignment
- Cease and desist notices, responses to infringement allegations, and coordination of enforcement action
- IP audits ahead of a fundraise or a sale, establishing what the company actually owns and what it merely uses
We search first. Filing without a proper search is how a business spends two years building a brand it will eventually have to abandon, and a search costs a fraction of a rebrand.
Ownership is checked as carefully as registration. Marks and works created by founders, agencies or contractors frequently sit outside the company that trades on them, and the assignment has to be documented before an investor asks the question.
Deadlines in this area are absolute. Examination replies, opposition timelines and renewal dates are diarised and confirmed to you, and we act on them rather than reporting them.
Trade mark work is carried out under the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the Trade Marks Rules, 2017. Our Founder, CS Mohit Bhardwaj, is a registered Trade Mark Agent, and our Associate Partner – Legal, Adv. (CS) Prerna Gaur Bhardwaj, is a Registered Trademark Attorney and an Advocate enrolled with the Bar Council of India.
Section 145 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, read with the Trade Marks Rules, governs who may act as an agent before the Registrar of Trade Marks. A Company Secretary in Practice is among the professionals eligible to be registered as a trade marks agent.
Copyright work is carried out under the Copyright Act, 1957 and the Copyright Rules, 2013, including registration with the Copyright Office and the recordal of assignments and licences under Sections 18, 19 and 45.
Contentious proceedings and enforcement before the courts are conducted by an Advocate enrolled under the Advocates Act, 1961, in our case together with Prehit Legal, our legal partner firm.
Licenses & Registrations
Every business carries a set of registrations that it must hold in order to trade, to employ people, to import or export, to claim a benefit or to satisfy a customer’s vendor onboarding. Individually they are administrative; collectively they are the difference between operating and being shut down.
We obtain these registrations, maintain them, and handle amendments, renewals and surrenders as the business changes.
- Goods and Services Tax registration, amendment, additional place of business and cancellation
- Food business licences and registrations, including central and state licences and their renewal
- Udyam registration for micro, small and medium enterprises, and advice on the benefits it carries
- Startup India recognition with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade
- Importer Exporter Code, and modification and updation of the code
- Shops and establishment registration, professional tax, and employees’ provident fund and state insurance registrations
- Trade licences, sectoral registrations and Legal Entity Identifiers as the business requires
- Amendments, renewals, surrenders and the transfer of registrations following a restructuring
We maintain a register of what your entity holds, with the renewal dates, so that a licence does not lapse quietly and surface during an audit or a customer’s onboarding check.
Where a company is restructured, merged or converted, we identify which registrations survive, which must be amended and which have to be obtained afresh — this is the step most often missed after a scheme is sanctioned.
For newly incorporated entities the registrations are sequenced against what the business actually needs on day one, rather than applied for all at once and then maintained unnecessarily.
Registrations are obtained under the statutes that govern them, including the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Act, 2006, the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992, the Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952, the Employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948 and the applicable state shops and establishments legislation.
Startup recognition is granted by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade under the notifications issued by it.
This work is carried out in our capacity as Company Secretaries in Practice under the Company Secretaries Act, 1980, which recognises representation and filing before authorities in relation to corporate and allied laws.
We do not provide taxation advice, accounting or statutory audit services. Registration under the tax statutes is obtained as a compliance and filing exercise; advice on tax positions remains with the client’s Chartered Accountant, with whom we work rather than compete.
Working with us
Registrations and intellectual property are the areas where a small omission is cheapest to fix early and most expensive to fix late. We would rather spend an hour on a search or a register of licences at the start of a relationship than a year on an opposition or a lapsed approval afterwards.
Trade mark and copyright matters are led by our Founder, a registered Trade Mark Agent, together with our Associate Partner – Legal, a Registered Trademark Attorney and an Advocate, so that prosecution and enforcement sit with the same team.
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This page describes the services offered by MPS & Associates, Company Secretaries, and the statutory provisions under which that work is carried out. It is general information about our practice and is not legal advice, an opinion or a solicitation. Statutory thresholds and procedures change; the position applicable to a particular company should be confirmed before it is acted upon.