Saya & Associates
A brand you have not registered is a brand you are renting.
Most intellectual property problems in Indian businesses are the same problem: the mark was used for four years before anyone filed it, the logo was made by a freelancer with no assignment, and the code was written by a contractor whose agreement said nothing about ownership. All three are cheap to fix in advance and expensive to fix afterwards.
Securing it, keeping it, enforcing it.
Trade marks
Availability searches, filing and prosecution before the Trade Marks Registry, responses to examination reports, show cause hearings, opposition and rectification.
Copyright
Registration of literary, artistic, software and audiovisual works, assignment and licensing, and infringement actions including in software and content.
Designs & patents
Design registration and enforcement, and coordination of patent filing and prosecution with registered patent agents where a matter calls for it.
Infringement & passing off
Suits for infringement and passing off before the Delhi High Court and the commercial courts, interim injunctions, and settlement on terms that hold.
Personality & publicity rights
Unauthorised use of a name, likeness, voice or endorsement, including machine-generated imitation, and the advertising rules that govern endorsements.
Online enforcement
Takedowns with platforms and marketplaces, intermediary notices under the IT Rules, domain name disputes and action against counterfeit listings.
Ownership is a paperwork problem before it is a litigation problem.
Nothing in an intellectual property dispute is harder to argue than a chain of title with a gap in it. Where the logo, the copy, the photographs or the source code were made by someone outside the company, ownership does not pass by default — it passes by a written assignment. The audit that finds those gaps takes days; the suit that turns on one takes years.
On enforcement, the first question is whether a cease and desist letter helps or hurts. Sometimes it produces a settlement. Sometimes it produces a rectification petition against your own mark. That call is made before the letter goes, not after.
File early, paper the chain, enforce selectively.
Secure
Search and file, in the classes the business actually trades in — and, where use predates filing, on the basis of that prior use.
Paper
Assignments from founders, employees, agencies and contractors, and licences for whatever is used under permission rather than owned.
Enforce
Notice, platform takedown or suit, chosen by what the infringement is actually costing and by what each route risks.