The 5 Trade Marks Registry Offices and Their Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction Guide · Trade Marks Registry

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

If you are filing a trademark in India, the first question is which Trade Marks Registry office will handle it. India has five offices (Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Ahmedabad), and the office is fixed by where the applicant has its principal place of business, not by where you would like to file. This page maps every state and union territory to its office, explains the rule behind it, and flags the few places where the official list needs a second look. Last verified October 2026.

01Why the office matters

The Trade Marks Registry is one national body, but it works through five regional offices, and your application goes to exactly one of them. That choice affects where your file is examined, where hearings are held, and which office issues notices to you.

Hearings happen at your office

Examination reports, show-cause hearings and opposition hearings are handled by the office that has your file. If you are a Chennai applicant, expect your matter to be dealt with in Chennai. Most hearings can now be attended by video, but the office still decides the officer, the schedule and the cause list.

The wrong address creates trouble later

Applicants who guess the office, or use a convenient address that is not their real principal place of business, can face delays or objections. Details on an application are hard to change cleanly once a file has moved forward, so it is worth getting the address right on day one.

Many businesses span several states

A company may be registered in one state, run its head office in another, and sell in all of them. The rule has a clear answer for this, and it is covered below.

In India, the Trade Marks Registry office is decided by the applicant's principal place of business, not by where the goods are sold.

02How the appropriate office is decided

Rule 4 of the Trade Marks Rules, 2017 defines the "appropriate office". It looks first at the applicant's principal place of business in India. Where there is no principal place of business in India, it looks at the address for service in India given in the application.

The rule also applies beyond the first filing. The same appropriate office is used for notices of opposition, applications for removal or cancellation, and other proceedings under the Trade Marks Act, 1999.

• Individual or firm: the principal place of business of the applicant.
• Company with many branches: the principal place of business, which is normally the head office, not each branch.
• Foreign applicant with no Indian base: the address for service in India. This is usually the address of the Indian attorney or agent.
• Joint applicants: the principal place of business stated in the application. Check this with your attorney if the joint applicants sit in different offices.

03The five offices and their states

The table below follows the territorial list published by IP India. Check the live IP India page before you file, because territorial lists can be revised.

Two entries need care. Nagaland is not clearly named on the IP India page we checked, and many secondary sources place it with the Kolkata office. Ladakh is also not separately named, and may be read with Jammu and Kashmir under Delhi. If your principal place of business is in either, confirm the office with IP India or your attorney before filing.

04Office by office notes

Mumbai: the Head Office

Mumbai is the Head Office of the Trade Marks Registry, and it handles Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Goa. Searches for "mumbai trademark registry jurisdiction" usually come from applicants in Pune, Nagpur, Indore, Raipur or Panaji, who all fall here. Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh applicants often assume Delhi because of geography, but their files go to Mumbai.

Delhi: the largest northern territory

Delhi covers the National Capital Territory, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Chandigarh. A business in Gurugram, Noida, Lucknow, Ludhiana or Dehradun files here. Because this is a high-volume region, hearings and notices can be heavy, so keep your contact details current.

Kolkata: the east and north-east

Kolkata handles West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand and most of the north-east, along with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Applicants in Patna, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar and Guwahati file at Kolkata.

Chennai: the south

Chennai covers the four southern states, Telangana, and the union territories of Puducherry and Lakshadweep. A start-up in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kochi or Visakhapatnam files here, even though Bengaluru and Hyderabad are far from Chennai.

Ahmedabad: the west

Ahmedabad handles Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. A Surat textile firm, a Jaipur exporter and a Rajkot manufacturer all file here.

05Common mistakes

• Choosing the nearest city instead of the mapped office. Distance does not matter. The state of your principal place of business does.
• Using a registered office address that is only on paper. If your real head office is in another state, tell your attorney which address is the true principal place of business.
• Moving offices and forgetting the record. If you shift your head office to another state, the appropriate office for later proceedings may change. Ask your attorney how to update the record.
• Assuming a foreign applicant can pick any office. Without an Indian principal place of business, the Indian address for service decides the office.
• Treating the Registry office as the court. An infringement suit is filed in a court chosen under different rules.

06Registry side and court side

Once a mark is filed, two tracks run side by side. On the registry track, you deal with examination, journal publication, opposition and renewal at your appropriate office. On the court track, disputes about the mark go to the courts, including the High Court IP Divisions.

Court-side work follows its own geography. To see how cases are searched across courts, read case search across Indian courts. To check whether a mark is already taken before you file, read how to search Indian trademarks by word, phonetic and Vienna class. Teams that need IP court data inside their own systems can look at the Claw IP court data API for India. If your IP work sits beside property disputes, see property litigation case management software.

07Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

For trademark work, Claw is an all-in-one option for India that covers both sides described above. Its IPR Solutions tab tracks IP India matters across trademarks, patents, designs and geographical indications. It monitors the Trade Marks Journal for conflicting marks using text, phonetic and visual matching and alerts you. It also lists pending compliances such as trademark renewals and patent annuity and response deadlines, pending hearings from trademark and patent filings, and related documents and tasks. On the court side, Claw tracks IP litigation across Indian courts that have a case website, including party-name discovery, the High Court IP Divisions, hearings, orders and cause lists, with judgment research over 30 crore+ judgments and Legal GPT. Claw covers 9,102 courts, benches and forums, with results in under 5 seconds, over 1.5 billion+ records, Supreme Court from 1950 and High Courts from 1990.

Claw does not yet track copyright registration at the Copyright Office. For copyright, Claw is court-side only. IP features are bundled in the Premium plan (Rs 1,099 per month or Rs 10,999 per year, excluding GST) or Enterprise. There is no IP-only plan.

Claw is not the right pick for every IP team. For global multi-country docketing and annuities, Anaqua, Clarivate and Dennemeyer are stronger. For very high-volume docketing at specialist IP firms, Iolite and JSK go deeper. For USPTO-first or CIPO-first work, Alt Legal fits better. For AI prior-art and structure search, PatSnap, Questel and IPRally lead. For mass marketplace takedowns, look at Red Points or Corsearch. Claw's case is the all-in-one India fit: registry, court, AI and price in one place. Note that Claw does not decide your Registry office. That is fixed by Rule 4, as above.

08Sources and further reading

Primary sources for the territorial list and the rule. Check these before you file.

• IP India, territorial jurisdiction of Trade Marks Registry offices: ipindia.gov.in/office-locations
• IP India, Trade Marks Rules, 2017: ipindia.gov.in/tm-rules-2017
• WIPO Lex, Trade Marks Rules, 2017: wipo.int/wipolex
• Claw: clawlaw.in

Last verified October 2026. This page is general information, not legal advice. Confirm your office with IP India or a trademark attorney before filing.

09Frequently asked questions