Journal watch

The Trade Marks Registry publishes a journal every week. Anyone can oppose an advertised application within four months of the journal being made available. Journal watch compares each journal with your portfolio so you can see conflicts in time.

The journal list

Journals still open for opposition, newest first. Each row shows the last date for opposition, the days left and how many logo marks have no readable text.

Journal watch shows the journals that are still open for opposition. For each journal you see:

• the journal number and publication date,
• the last date for opposition, with the days left,
• the number of advertised marks and how many of them are logo marks without readable text.

Nishaan fetches new journals every Wednesday night. Fetch new journals checks for a new journal straight away; it can take several minutes, and the list refreshes when it finishes.

Creating a search report

A search report for journal 2282. Each row shows the advertised mark, its application number and owner, then your mark it conflicts with and the word it matched on.

1. Tick one or more journals.
2. Choose Generate Search Report.

The report lists each advertised mark that is in the same class as one of your marks and is similar to it. For each match you see the journal mark, its application number and owner, your matching mark, and the reason for the match:

Common words like "private", "limited", "india", "logo" and "device" are ignored, and so are short endings that thousands of words share, such as "tion" or "line". Your own applications never appear as conflicts.

Choose a reason below to see the kind of mark it catches. The marks are examples.

Logo matches

Nishaan also compares pictures. Every logo in a journal is compared with the logos of your marks in the same class, so a copied or closely imitated logo is found even when the words are different or the logo has no words at all. When a match is on the logo, the report shows both pictures next to each other.

Logo matching finds the same drawing at a different size, in a different colour, or light on a dark background.

AI also reads every logo in the journal. It reads the words in the logo, including Hindi and other scripts, so logo marks are matched on their words like any other mark. It also notes what each logo shows, so a match can be on the idea: Logo shows the same: lion means both logos show a lion, even though the drawings differ. Logos are read within a few hours of a journal arriving. See AI help.

Under each match, Review with AI gives a second opinion: how likely confusion is, the reasons, and whether to oppose or watch.

Your marks get their logo from the journal that advertised them. For a mark that was never in a journal Nishaan has read, upload its logo in the mark's panel in Portfolio.

Some logo marks have no readable text and no picture Nishaan could compare. The report tells you how many marks could not be compared so you can look at them in the journal itself.

Export CSV saves the report as a spreadsheet.

Select any application number to see the full record of that mark.

Marks resembling well-known trade marks

Below the search report, Nishaan lists the advertised marks in a journal that contain a mark on IP India's list of well-known trade marks, such as PATANJALI or ASIAN PAINTS, and were filed by someone other than its owner. A well-known mark is protected in every class (Section 11(2)), so each one is a likely opposition, whether you act for the brand or advise the applicant. Choose the journal at the top of the card; choose a row to see the mark's details.

To keep out marks that only share an ordinary word, a one-word name such as SYMPHONY counts only when it is the first word of the mark, and names of three letters or fewer, such as HP, only when they are the whole mark. A mark's details also show Well-known mark when the mark itself is on the list.

Next step

To act on a conflict, see Reports.