India has five Trade Marks Registry offices and you do not get to choose between them. For anyone in Pune, that is the Mumbai office, which covers Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Goa. Filing is online, so the jurisdiction matters for where your file sits, not for where you have to be.
| Question | Short answer for Pune |
|---|---|
| Where does a Pune application get filed | The Mumbai office of the Trade Marks Registry, at Boudhik Sampada Bhavan, Antop Hill, S.M. Road, Mumbai 400037. It holds jurisdiction over Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Goa, and it is also the head office of the Registry. |
| Does that mean travelling to Mumbai | No. Filing, examination reply and most hearings are online. The jurisdiction matters for where the file sits, not for where you have to be. |
| Government fee | INR 4,500 per class per mark for an individual, a DPIIT-recognised startup or an Udyam-registered MSME, filing online. INR 9,000 per class for everyone else. |
| Filing on paper | INR 5,000 and INR 10,000 respectively. There is no reason to do it. |
| How the fee is counted | Per class, per mark. Two classes means two fees. A word mark and a logo filed separately are two marks. |
| Realistic timeline | Roughly 9 to 12 months to registration where nothing goes wrong. Objection or opposition adds a year or more. |
| Can you use the TM symbol before registration | Yes, from the day you file. The circled R is only for a registered mark. |
| Validity | 10 years from the date of application, renewable indefinitely. |
| Watch out in 2026 | The Nice Classification moved to its 13th Edition on 1 January 2026. Class headings shifted, so older class advice may now be wrong. |
India has five Trade Marks Registry offices and you do not get to choose between them. Jurisdiction follows the principal place of business of the applicant. For anyone in Pune, that is the Mumbai office, which covers Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Goa, and which happens to be the head office of the Registry.
This is worth knowing but not worth worrying about. Filing is online through ipindiaonline.gov.in, examination reports arrive by email, replies are filed electronically and show cause hearings are conducted by video. A Pune applicant does not need to be in Mumbai, and any firm implying you need a Mumbai presence is selling you something you do not need.
What jurisdiction does affect is enforcement. If you ever have to sue, the Bombay High Court is the forum most Maharashtra trademark litigation runs through, and it is one of the more experienced IP benches in the country. That is a real advantage of being a Maharashtra applicant, and it sits at the far end of the process rather than at the filing stage.
Everything else on this page is procedure. This is the part where people lose real money, and it is almost always a strategy failure rather than a filing error.
Goods and services are divided into 45 classes and the fee is charged per class. File in the wrong one and you have not simply wasted the fee. You have a registration that does not cover what you sell, and you find out roughly six months later when the examination report arrives. Correcting it means an amendment on Form TM-M to strike out the wrong class and a fresh application in the right one, which resets your priority date by however long the detour took.
The classic error is a software business filing in Class 9, which covers software as a product, when what it actually sells is a subscription service belonging in Class 42. In Pune's SaaS cluster around Hinjawadi and Kharadi that mistake is common enough to be predictable, and it usually surfaces at exactly the point a founder is trying to close a funding round with a clean IP position.
There is a current complication worth flagging. The Nice Classification moved to its 13th Edition with effect from 1 January 2026, shifting certain goods and services between classes and refining scope descriptions. Class advice given in 2024 or 2025, including advice sitting in older blog posts, may no longer be right. Anything filed this year should be checked against the current edition rather than against precedent.
A public search on the IP India portal takes ten minutes and tells you whether an identical mark exists in your class. That is not the search that matters.
What causes refusals is Section 11, deceptive similarity to an earlier mark, and that turns on phonetic resemblance, visual resemblance and conceptual overlap rather than on identity. A mark that returns nothing on a literal search can still be refused against something that merely sounds like it in a related class. Section 9 causes the other half of refusals, where the mark is descriptive, generic or laudatory, and a great many first-time applicants pick precisely that kind of name because it explains what the business does.
The commercial logic is straightforward. A proper search costs a fraction of a filing fee and a fraction of what an objection reply costs. Filing blind on a name you have already printed on packaging and signage is where this gets expensive, because by then the sunk cost pushes people to fight for a mark they should have abandoned.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| The mark | Word mark as plain text, or a logo as a clear image file. A word mark and a logo are separate applications with separate fees. |
| Applicant proof | PAN and address proof of the individual, or incorporation certificate and PAN for a company or LLP |
| Form TM-48 | Power of attorney authorising the agent to act, signed by the applicant |
| Udyam or DPIIT certificate | Only if claiming the 50 per cent concession. Attached at filing. |
| Goods and services description | The specific list of what you sell, which drives class selection. Vague descriptions get objected to. |
| Proof of prior use, if claiming it | Invoices, advertisements, packaging or dated marketing material showing use from the claimed date. Only needed where you are claiming use earlier than the filing date. |
The prior use point is worth taking seriously in Pune, where a great many businesses have been trading under a name for a decade before getting round to registering it. A well-evidenced prior use claim materially strengthens your position against a later applicant. An unevidenced one is worse than not claiming at all, because it invites scrutiny you cannot then satisfy.
A clean application with no objection and no opposition takes roughly 9 to 12 months. An objection adds several months. An opposition is a contested proceeding with evidence and counter-statements and can add a year or more.
The government fee is fixed, published and non-negotiable. What varies is which side of the line you fall on.
| Applicant category | E-filing, per class per mark | Paper filing |
|---|---|---|
| Individual or sole proprietor filing in a personal name | INR 4,500 | INR 5,000 |
| DPIIT-recognised startup | INR 4,500 | INR 5,000 |
| Udyam-registered micro, small or medium enterprise | INR 4,500 | INR 5,000 |
| Company, LLP, partnership firm, trust, society, joint applicants | INR 9,000 | INR 10,000 |
The concession is a straight 50 per cent, set under the First Schedule to the Trade Marks Rules, 2017, and it is claimed by attaching the Udyam certificate or the DPIIT recognition certificate to Form TM-A at the time of filing. It is not applied retrospectively and it is not applied automatically to a company simply because the company is small.
This matters more in Pune than in most places. The city's manufacturing and auto component base around Chakan, Ranjangaon and Bhosari is overwhelmingly MSME, and a very large number of those businesses already hold Udyam registration for other reasons and simply do not know it halves this fee. On a three-class filing that is a difference of INR 13,500 on a single mark.
If you are a Private Limited company without an Udyam registration, it is worth checking whether you qualify before filing rather than after. The registration is free and takes a day.
| Component | Amount | Paid to |
|---|---|---|
| Government fee, individual, startup or MSME, e-filing | INR 4,500 per class per mark | Trade Marks Registry, at actuals |
| Government fee, company, LLP or other applicant, e-filing | INR 9,000 per class per mark | Trade Marks Registry, at actuals |
| Trademark search and class opinion | On quote | CorporateWalla |
| Filing on Form TM-A | On quote | CorporateWalla |
| Objection reply and show cause hearing | On quote | CorporateWalla |
| Opposition proceedings | On quote | CorporateWalla |
| Renewal on Form TM-R | Government fee INR 9,000, professional fee on quote | Registry and CorporateWalla |
Every professional fee above excludes GST. Government fees are paid by you at actuals to the Trade Marks Registry and none of it sits inside our fee.
All fees and charges listed are indicative only and do not constitute a binding offer. Final amounts may vary depending on the volume of work and the complexity involved.
Parent: Trademark Registration, the national page. If an examination report has already arrived, go to Trademark Objection Reply. Before filing, check whether Udyam or DPIIT recognition halves your fee. Same city: Private Limited Company Registration in Pune and GST Registration in Pune.
Your application is filed at the Mumbai office of the Trade Marks Registry, because it holds jurisdiction over Maharashtra along with Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Goa. But filing is online, examination reports come by email, replies are filed electronically and hearings are held by video. You do not need to travel and you do not need a Mumbai address.
INR 4,500 per class per mark for an individual, a DPIIT-recognised startup or an Udyam-registered MSME filing online, and INR 9,000 per class for companies, LLPs and other applicants. Filing on paper costs INR 5,000 and INR 10,000 respectively, which is why nobody should. The fee is fixed under the Trade Marks Rules, 2017 and paid at ipindiaonline.gov.in.
Only if you hold a valid Udyam registration or DPIIT startup recognition and attach the certificate at the time of filing. Being small is not enough on its own. If you are a Private Limited company that qualifies for Udyam but has never registered, it is worth doing that first, because the registration is free and it halves the fee on every class you file.
Roughly 9 to 12 months for a clean application with no objection and no opposition. An examination objection adds several months. An opposition is a contested proceeding and can add a year or more. You can use the TM symbol from the day you file, so protection in practice starts long before the certificate arrives.
As many as cover what you actually sell, and no more. The fee is per class, so this is a direct cost decision. Getting it wrong in the other direction is worse: a registration that does not cover your real business is close to useless, and fixing it means an amendment plus a fresh application and a lost priority date. Note that the Nice Classification moved to its 13th Edition on 1 January 2026, so class advice from earlier years should be re-checked.
No, those are two marks and two sets of fees. Most businesses start with the word mark, because it is broader and stops a competitor using the name in any styling. A logo registration is worth adding where the visual identity itself carries value.
Yes, if you can evidence it. A prior use claim with dated invoices, advertisements or packaging materially strengthens your position, including against someone who filed before you. A prior use claim you cannot substantiate is worse than not making one, because it invites scrutiny you then cannot satisfy. This comes up often in Pune, where a lot of established businesses register long after they started trading.
You reply within 30 days of the examination report. Objections are usually under Section 9, that the mark is descriptive or generic, or Section 11, that it is deceptively similar to an earlier mark. A well-drafted reply resolves a large proportion of them. If it does not, there is a show cause hearing by video. Missing the 30 day window is the real risk, because it puts the application at risk of abandonment.
TM can be used from the day you file, and signals a claim to the mark. The circled R can only be used once the mark is actually registered. Using the circled R on an unregistered mark is a misrepresentation and should be avoided.
No. Trademark rights are territorial. An Indian registration protects you in India only. If you sell into other markets, you file there separately, or use the Madrid Protocol to route applications through a single international filing based on your Indian application. That is worth planning before you file rather than after, because the international route builds on the Indian one.
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Reviewed by CA & CS Team - CorporateWalla · Last Updated 04 August 2026 · · Sources: IP India, Trade Marks Registry, IP India online filing portal
Canonical: https://corporatewalla.com/pune/trademark-registration
