Title and content marks in media
Film, series and programme titles are among the most contested marks on the register, and Class 41 is where they sit. A single title can attract objection from a registered mark, an unregistered prior user, and a trade body register maintained outside the Trade Marks Act altogether.
The registrability question is the ordinary one - is the title distinctive, or merely descriptive of the content - but the commercial question is usually clearance rather than registration. Establishing that nobody else has a prior claim matters more, and earlier, than the certificate.
Financial services marks and the regulatory overlay
A trademark registration is not a licence. A mark registered in Class 36 for financial services says nothing about whether you may lawfully provide those services, which is a matter for the RBI, SEBI or IRDAI.
The practical point for a Mumbai applicant is that the two run in parallel and neither substitutes for the other. Regulated entities also need to check that the mark itself does not imply a regulatory status the business does not hold, which is a separate objection risk under Section 9.
Mumbai is not one of five Registry offices. It is the Registry
IP India puts it in one sentence: "the Trade Marks registry is at Mumbai and its Branches are located in Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad and New Delhi." So a Mumbai applicant does not file at a branch. The file sits with the office the other four branch from.
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. Mumbai's territory is Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Goa, which means a Bhopal, Raipur or Panaji applicant is on the Mumbai register too, alongside every Maharashtra applicant from Nagpur to Kolhapur.
In practice the office of record decides which office issues your examination report, which office lists a show cause hearing and which office handles every later form. Filing and fee payment are online.
What Maharashtra costs a business around the filing
Maharashtra has the most fully verified professional tax position of any state we write about, so this is the one city page where we will give you the actual numbers.
Professional tax. The levy is under the Maharashtra State Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Act, 1975, administered through MahaGST. Registration is free; the only amount payable is the tax. For an employer deducting from salary the slabs are nil up to ₹7,500 a month, ₹175 a month from ₹7,501 to ₹10,000, and ₹200 a month above ₹10,000 with ₹300 in February, which totals ₹2,500 a year, the constitutional ceiling under Article 276(2). Women are exempt up to ₹25,000 a month, from 1 April 2023. Enrolment for the business in its own right is ₹2,500 a year flat for most Schedule I classes.
The due dates changed, and most pages have not caught up. From 28 February 2026, monthly professional tax returns are due by the 15th of the following month, the annual return by 15 March, and the enrolment payment by 15 June. Whether you file monthly or annually depends on last year's liability: ₹50,000 or more means monthly, below that annual, and your first year of registration is monthly regardless.
Shops and establishments, and why you may get no certificate. The Act is the Maharashtra Shops and Establishments (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 2017, the law behind what everyone still calls Gumasta. With fewer than ten workers there is no registration and no fee: you file a one-time free intimation in Form F within 60 days of commencing business, and no certificate is issued. That surprises people whose bank has asked for a Gumasta certificate, so it is worth knowing before you promise one. With ten or more workers it is registration in Form A on Aaple Sarkar, with a fee on a slab by worker count that we confirm before quoting.
The municipal licence is usually the wrong ask. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation licenses specified trades, such as eating houses and lodging houses. An ordinary shop or office does not get a BMC trade licence at all; it goes the Gumasta route above. If you have been quoted for a "Mumbai trade licence" for a software company, ask which trade it covers.
If you are incorporating alongside the trademark. ROC Mumbai-I now covers Mumbai and Mumbai Suburban districts only. The old ROC Mumbai was split: ROC Mumbai-II at Navi Mumbai took Aurangabad, Dhule, Jalgaon, Nandurbar, Nashik, Palghar, Raigad and Thane, and ROC Nagpur covers central and eastern Maharashtra. The practical consequence is sharp: a move from Thane into Mumbai is now a change of Registrar within the same state, needing a special resolution plus Regional Director confirmation on INC-23 and INC-28, not a bare INC-22. The new offices became operational on 16 February 2026. We do not publish a Maharashtra stamp duty figure for the memorandum and articles, because the only schedule available is an undated compilation; we quote it before you pay it.
What a Mumbai business usually files alongside
Get Udyam registration in place before the trademark, not after: holding it as a small enterprise is what entitles you to the ₹4,500 fee slab rather than ₹9,000, and it must be attached to Form TM-A at filing. GST registration is separate. Media and finance applicants should also settle which group entity will own the mark before filing, because moving it later means an assignment and a recordal, and where one entity owns the mark and another uses it, the licence should be documented at the same time.
How we work with you in Mumbai
Regikart has no Mumbai office. Our offices are Kolkata, which is the head office, Delhi and Bengaluru, and Mumbai work is done remotely from one of those three. Documents come to us on WhatsApp or by email at +91 70444 94804 and [email protected], and filing, examination replies and hearings are handled without you travelling. If you want an office you can walk into, we will say so rather than pretend otherwise.
Consumer and D2C brands: file before you launch
The cost of discovering a conflict after launch is packaging, listings, signage, advertising already spent, and sometimes the brand itself. The cost of discovering it before launch is a search.
For a consumer brand the word mark comes first, in the class of the goods. A device filing follows where the visual identity is itself distinctive and settled.