implications of haldiram case
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
The implications of……..Haldiram India Pvt. Ltd v Union of India
and Anr
PRESENTED BY R.KUMARAVENKATESAN
ADVOCATE PATENTS DEPARTMENT ALTACIT GLOBAL
PRESENTATION
INTRODUCTION
The news,“TMR discovered in February this year that 44,404 files of trademark registrations have gone missing from its five branches in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Chennai”.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 and
Who will be punished for this gross negligence
IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI W.P. (C) 12505/2009 & CM 10327/2010 (for
impleadment) CORAM: JUSTICE S. MURALIDHAR HALDIRAM INDIA PVT LTD ..... Petitioner Versus UNION OF INDIA AND .... Respondents family of Kamla Devi Aggarwal/ Rameshwar Lal Aggarwal,
THE CASE…..,
• The case history,• M/s. Chandmal Ganga Bishan filed an application with the
Registrar of Trade Marks, New Delhi for grant of registration on 29th December 1972- for the name & logo HALDIRAM BHUJIAWALA-published in the Trade Marks Journal- an opposition filed by a firm M/s. Haldiram Madanlal- On 31st July 1980 the Registrar of Trade Marks dismissed the opposition- directed the application No. 285062 to proceed to registration for the entire territory of India except West Bengal- Later the firm M/s. Chandmal Ganga Bishan was dissolved. In 1987 orders were passed by the Registrar for recordal of the names of the sons of late Mr. Moolchand Aggarwal as proprietors of the aforementioned registered mark. They are the present petitioners.Mr. Kamla Devi Aggarwal, an ex-partner of M/s. Chandmal Ganga Bishan- claimed to be the registered proprietor of an identical trademark registered-opposed by the petitioners
The case history,
The Petitioner in 1999 filed the present case for rectification of trade mark before the Delhi High Court
in the course of litigationthe Petitioner filed the following six requests with the TMR
for issuance of certified copies of several documents:• Request for supply of two sets of certified copies of the
documents relating to• filing copies of registered trademark owned by him and owned by respondent filing copies of opposition filed before the registry in total he asked for 6 such copies from the registry and the
copies asked for were submitted by him and by the respondents in the years 1972 to 1980 before the TMR.
PRESENT CASE SCENARIO,,,
we are unable to trace some of the fileswe are unable to trace some of the files””
Aggrieved petitioner approached High Court of Delhi seeking a direction to the TMR to give them an inspection of the
above files.The DIPP conducted an enquiry as directed by the Delhi High Court And replied that, the files went missing when the Trademarks Registry was
decentralized in 2006-07 and all registered files were sent to respective branch Registries.
Court dissatisfied with this explanation and vide order dated 16th December, 2010,
directed that the matter ought to be examined at the level of the Secretary, Department of Industries, Government of India to indicate whether only the files in question were missing or documents relating to other cases were also missing;
Reply from the TMR
The DIPP filed a compliance affidavit before Justice Murlidhar of the Delhi High Court
• States-44,000 files had been misplaced by the TMR. • main cause was the decentralization of the TMR from Mumbai to
other cities.Justice Muralidhar said, “It is alarming that as many as 44,404 files of
trademark registrations have gone missing since 2006 and this fact remained unknown to the Trademark Registry and DIPP till an enquiry was ordered by this Court”.
A meeting was conducted to review the court order by the DIPP reveals,
• the absence of an effective digital record keeping system • lack of due diligence by the TMR staff.
High court comments…
The verdict indicated the necessity following requirements for the trade mark registry:
Reconstruction of missed files of the Petititioner professional consultancy, assessment, submission of report on assessment quarterly audit e-filing of trade mark amendment of trade mark rules
scientific record keeping scheme physical audit of all files in the registry
The Verdict:
the functioning of the Trade Marks Registry has been re-organized with the objective of establishing complete transparency and
professionalism in the Registry. • where the functions of the Trade marks registry have been
streamlined into 11 sections coming into effect from 02/05/2011. • Under these office orders, while the Trade Mark office functions
relating to Examination of applications, Issuing Exam Reports and Considering reply to exam reports has been centralized at Mumbai,
• functions relating to Receipts and EDP section, Inspection and records, Opposition and Rectification Matters, Show-cause hearing notices, Assignments, Renewal and Registered user section are assigned to a separate section in each Registry under the supervision of an Officer in charge who is responsible for monitoring time bound implementation of the measures undertaken by the Registry to improve efficiency.
Impact on TMR,
• In house verification of all files and placed in the public domain within six months.
• Records of old registered files to be uploaded in the main server within three months.
• records of all trademarks have been made public on the registry website
• issuing a public notice requesting right holders of unaccounted files to produce the necessary documents to enable reconstituted amendment/updation of records.
• A new IT policy has been provided for on the official site of the IPO
• to completely digitize the complete IP records by 31st March 2012, positively.
Registry's proposed corrective action
• Additionally, it was stated that a professional service provider, as a consultant to make a detailed assessment of the record management system was engaged; and further action was to be based on the said report.
• Further, a quarterly audit of the trademark records • physical audit of the files in the record room by the
record in charge, in every three months and the head of the Office in every six months would undertake .
• The record in charge would take necessary steps to build the missing files
• It was also proposed that the trademark rules would be amended and for online filing of applications would be provided for,
Registry's proposed corrective action continued…..
Apprehensions…
Whether the trade mark registry is
Able to handle voluminous filingMaintaining strategic record keepingUpdating of records Public access to recordsTransparency in proceedingsCompliance with the legislationConformity to world standards
suggestions
• Digital record keeping• Decentralization• E-filing • Digitalization of old records• Periodic updation• Periodic audit• Random checking of records
THANK YOU