Can a trademark be protected indefinitely?
In India, you can protect a trademark on the basis of either use or registration. Both approaches have developed historically in India, but today trademark protection systems generally combine both elements. A registration of a trademark is always granted only for a limited period of time, usually 10 years. But it is renewable without restriction in time. Therefore, a trademark may be protected indefinitely. In fact the concept of trademarks can be said to have grown out of passing off and trademarks were protected in this way for several decades before the legislation which first provided for their registration. Unregistered trademarks can now be protected only through the action for ‘passing off’. The principle of passing off can be stated as “no one is entitled to pass off his goods as those of another”. Passing off is concerned with misrepresentations made by one trader, which damage the goodwill of another. The registration under the statutory trademark law does not confer any new
