Decades of use, and no registration
This is the defining pattern in eastern India. A firm has traded under the same name since the 1970s, everyone in the trade knows it, and nobody ever filed.
Unregistered use gives a passing-off claim, which requires proof of reputation, misrepresentation and damage. A registration gives an infringement claim, which requires none of those. The gap between the two is measured in years of litigation.
Where genuine prior use exists it is a real asset, but under the Trade Marks Rules, 2017 claiming a use date earlier than the filing date requires an affidavit of use with dated supporting evidence. Firms with fifty years of history frequently cannot document the first thirty, and the claimed date must be one that can be stood behind.
Which Trade Marks Registry office handles a Kolkata filing
A Kolkata applicant files at the Kolkata office of the Trade Marks Registry. There are five Registry locations in India: the Registry itself is at Mumbai, and its branches are at Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad and New Delhi. Territorial jurisdiction follows the applicant's principal place of business in India, or the address for service in India where there is no place of business here. It is not decided by where your agent sits.
Kolkata's territory is the widest of the five by the number of states it takes in: West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Sikkim and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In practice the office of record is the one that issues your examination report, lists a show cause hearing and handles every later form, including renewal every ten years. Filing and fee payment are online, so a Guwahati or Patna applicant is on the Kolkata register without ever travelling to Kolkata.
What West Bengal costs a business around the filing
Shops and establishments, and the renewal point almost nobody carries. A Kolkata establishment registers under the West Bengal Shops and Establishments Act, 1963 through wbshopsonline.gov.in. The registration fee runs on a slab by number of employees, which we confirm before quoting. The useful part is the renewal: the renewal fee was dispensed with by notification Labr/175/IT&EoDB dated 7 January 2019, and renewal is deemed. If you are being asked to pay an annual West Bengal shops renewal fee, ask what it is for.
Professional tax. West Bengal levies professional tax under the West Bengal State Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Act, 1979, administered by the Directorate of Commercial Taxes at comtax.wb.gov.in. There are two certificates: registration as an employer deducting from salary, and enrolment for the business in its own right. Neither certificate carries a government fee, and a duplicate certificate costs ₹20 per application under rule 26. The tax itself is capped by the Constitution at ₹2,500 per person per year under Article 276(2). A revised schedule of slabs has been reported and is not settled, so we confirm the rate that applies to your payroll rather than quoting one here.
The municipal document, and its real name. Kolkata does not issue a "trade licence". The Kolkata Municipal Corporation issues a Certificate of Enlistment, and that is the term on the Corporation's own pages and on the certificate. The trade-category schedule sits in the Licence Department Budget Schedule passed by the Corporation each financial year under section 131(3) of the KMC Act, 1980, so the fee depends on your trade category and premises and is revised annually. Renewal is annual and late renewal attracts a fine. Competitors routinely call this a trade licence, which is why applications get filed under the wrong head.
If you are incorporating alongside the trademark. West Bengal's incorporation stamp duty is published and flat: ₹10 on INC-32, ₹60 on the memorandum and ₹300 on the articles, not linked to authorised capital. Because the articles duty does not scale, a Kolkata incorporation costs less in stamp duty than a Delhi one at any authorised capital above roughly ₹2 lakh, where Delhi charges 0.15%. Your registered office then falls under ROC Kolkata-I, which since the Registrars were re-notified with effect from 1 January 2026 covers the district of Kolkata only. The rest of West Bengal, Howrah included, is ROC Kolkata-II. Both offices sit in Kolkata city, so the office address is not the guide, the district of the registered office is.
What a Kolkata business usually files alongside
Take Udyam registration before the trademark rather than after: holding it as a small enterprise is what entitles you to the ₹4,500 fee slab instead of ₹9,000. GST registration is separate. Silpasathi, at silpasathi.wb.gov.in, is West Bengal's state single window for approvals and clearances, and is where several state permissions now route.
How we work with you in Kolkata
Kolkata is Regikart's head office, at 129A, Bangur Avenue, near Reliance Smart, Block A, Lake Town, Kolkata, West Bengal 700055. You can drop documents in, or send them on WhatsApp or by email at +91 70444 94804 and [email protected]. The other two offices are in Delhi and Bengaluru.
Tea, agri-commodities and geographical indications
A trademark and a geographical indication are different instruments. Darjeeling tea is protected as a GI, which identifies origin and is available to producers in the region who meet the standard. A trademark identifies a single trade source and belongs to one proprietor.
A tea business ordinarily needs its own mark for its own brand, and may separately be entitled to use a GI where it qualifies. The two coexist, and a mark that merely appropriates a geographical name is refused under Section 9 as descriptive of geographical origin.
Sweets, food and the packaging question
Food and confectionery brands sit in Classes 29, 30 and 32 depending on the goods. For a sweet shop or packaged-food business the word mark comes first, because it survives every change of packaging.
A device filing is worth adding where the packaging artwork is itself distinctive and has been in use long enough to be recognised, which for established Kolkata houses is often the case.