The Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks (CGPDTM) has put forth a Draft Trade Marks (Amendment) Rules, 2015 for Public Comments.
The draft includes a revised, inter alia, application fee and renewal fee. The current trademark application fee is Rs. 4000/- which was increased last year from Rs. 3500/-. Renewal fee towards a single class is Rs. 5000/- presently. The new fee structure proposes to increase the application fee to Rs. 8000/- for online applications and Rs. 8800/- for manual/paper filings, and renewal fee to be increased to Rs. 10000/- per class.
Revised Trademark Fee
While the fees are relatively lesser than foreign countries, the registration process still needs significant improvement, given the pendency and disposal rate of applications. It is quite a common occurrence that each trademark offices work at its own pace. For example, Delhi and Kolkata offices seem to be disposing applications at a faster pace, which causes the applications lodged at those offices to be registered quicker than other jurisdictions.
With the increase in fee structure and the new recruitment drive, we only hope to see improvement in working standards of intellectual property wing of India.