Missing in action

A loss of data by India’s Trade Marks Registry is indicative of wider problems that plague domestic and international IP owners

Vandana Chatlani reports

“Is it possible that the Trade Marks Registry in this country can lose over 44,000 of its files and not realise that it has for over five years? Unfortunately, it appears it is.”

For any trademark owner in India, this statement, which opened an order by Justice S Muralidhar of Delhi High Court, is a terrifying one.

The court order, which was delivered on 6 April, paints a painful picture of an intellectual property system that continues to beleaguer Indian and foreign IP owners alike. How thousands of files disappeared from the Trade Marks Registry’s offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Ahmedabad remains a mystery. “What is disconcerting,” Muralidhar continued, “is that even the Trade Marks Registry has no real answer yet to the many questions that arise: who caused these many files to go missing, when exactly they went missing, whether these missing files can be recovered and, if not, whether they can be reconstructed.”