Under Indian trademark law, ‘descriptive words’, which delineate characteristics of a product, cannot be registered as trademarks, unless they acquire ‘distinctiveness’ or ‘secondary meaning’, through long, uninterrupted and continuous use of the mark. Therefore, substantial use of a descriptive word as a trademark may grant such word an exceptional status, permitting its registration as a trademark. However, the benchmark for protection and enforcement of descriptive is quite high and the fact that the mark has in fact acquired distinctiveness has to be duly established.
20 Apr 2020
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