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.
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.