Tracking Trademark Infringement Suits Across Indian Courts: The Act-Wise Method

How‑To · Trademark Litigation

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

If someone has filed a trademark infringement suit against your brand, or you are trying to check whether a known infringer has already been sued, a normal case-type search on a court website will usually tell you nothing. That is not a bug. Trademark infringement suits are almost always filed as ordinary commercial suits, so the case-type field says nothing about trademarks at all. This guide explains why that happens, what the law says about which court can hear the suit, and the four practical ways to actually find and watch these matters across Indian courts.

01Why trademark infringement suits hide from a normal search

Trademark infringement suits are largely invisible to the case-type filters most people reach for first, because of how they are actually filed.

They are filed as commercial suits, not "trademark" cases

Once the Commercial Courts Act 2015 applies, a trademark infringement suit above the specified value is filed and numbered as a commercial suit, commonly shown as CS(COMM) on court records, not under any case type that names trademarks. A search that filters by case type, looking for something like "trademark" or "IP", returns nothing, even though the suit is sitting in the system under a different label entirely.

The Intellectual Property Division only covers part of the picture

Some High Courts, Delhi High Court in particular, run a dedicated Intellectual Property Division (IPD) with its own case-type codes, for example C.O. (COMM.IPD-TM) for a trademark rectification petition. That is genuinely useful, but it mainly covers rectification and cancellation petitions and appeals from the Registrar, not the original trial-level infringement suit itself, which is usually filed and heard as a commercial suit at the trial or district court, or on the original side of a High Court that has one.

The reliable handle is the Act itself, not the case type

Because the case-type label does not mention trademarks, the more reliable way in is to search by the statute the suit is filed under: the Trade Marks Act, 1999. Most eCourts-linked court websites offer an Act-wise search precisely for this reason, and it works even when the case-type field would tell you nothing.

02The jurisdiction rule behind the mess: Section 134

Section 134 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 decides which court can hear a trademark suit, and it is the reason these suits end up spread across so many possible forums rather than sitting in one predictable place.

Section 134(1): the District Court floor

No suit for infringement of a registered trademark, for any right in a registered trademark, or for passing off, can be filed in any court below a District Court. This sets a floor. Whatever else applies, the suit cannot land in a court junior to a District Court.

Section 134(2): where the plaintiff does business, with a limit

Section 134(2) adds an extra option beyond the usual "where the defendant resides or the cause of action arose" rule under the Code of Civil Procedure. It lets the plaintiff sue in the District Court where it actually and voluntarily resides, carries on business, or personally works for gain, even if that has nothing to do with where the defendant is or where the infringement happened.

The important limit is that Section 134(2) applies only to the infringement and registered-trademark-rights limbs of the suit, not to a passing off claim on its own. A pure passing off action, without a registered trademark infringement claim alongside it, does not get the benefit of suing at the plaintiff’s own location under this provision; it falls back on the ordinary jurisdiction rules.

The Exxon point: a permitted user is not a registered user

A Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, in litigation involving Exxon Mobil Corporation, examined who can actually claim the Section 134(2) benefit. The explanation to Section 134(2) extends it to the registered proprietor and to a registered user of the mark. The Bench’s reasoning turned on the fact that this is a formal status: a party that is merely a permitted user of a mark, without being registered as a registered user under the Act, does not automatically get to piggyback on the registered proprietor’s or a registered user’s place of business to found jurisdiction under Section 134(2). In practice, this means a plaintiff group with a licensing structure needs to check who exactly is registered as a registered user before assuming it can sue close to home.

The Commercial Courts Act adds another layer

Once the Commercial Courts Act, 2015 came in, most substantial trademark suits also became "commercial disputes" heard by a Commercial Court or the Commercial Division of a High Court, provided the suit crosses the specified value, which was reduced to Rs 3 lakh by a 2018 amendment. That is a low bar, so most trademark infringement suits with any real commercial stake now run through the commercial court track rather than as an ordinary civil suit, which is exactly why they carry a CS(COMM) label rather than anything naming trademarks.

A trademark suit can legally land in any of several District Courts, depending on where the plaintiff does business, not just where the defendant is. That is precisely why watching only your local court is not enough.

Put together, these rules mean a brand owner cannot assume a suit involving its mark will show up in any one predictable court. A plaintiff choosing where to sue under Section 134(2) can pick a forum convenient to itself, and a defendant facing a suit can likewise be sued somewhere with no obvious connection to the dispute. That is exactly why checking one court, even your own, is not a reliable way to know whether your brand has been sued, or whether a known infringer has already been dragged to court.

03The four handles that actually find these suits

Given the problem above, there are four practical ways people actually track trademark infringement matters across Indian courts. None of them is complete on its own.

1. eCourts Act-wise search

Most eCourts-linked district court and High Court services portals offer a search by Act. You pick the Act from a dropdown, here the Trade Marks Act, 1999, and can leave the Section field blank. The official eCourts help guidance confirms that when no criteria are entered, the system shows the full list of Acts, and when an Act is chosen without a specific section, results cover all sections under that Act. This is the single most direct handle for trademark suits, because it searches by statute rather than by a case-type label that never mentions trademarks. The catch is that it is scoped per court or per district, requires a captcha for each search, and has to be repeated District Court by District Court, or High Court by High Court, to get any national picture.

2. Party-name monitoring

Searching by the name of your own brand, or the name of a known or suspected infringer, across court websites and case-status portals is the other core handle. It catches a suit regardless of which Act it is filed under, or how it is labelled, as long as the party name matches closely enough. It is also the only practical way to catch a passing off suit that is not paired with a registered trademark claim, since that would not necessarily surface on a Trade Marks Act search. The weakness is name variation: a defendant sued under a slightly different spelling, an old company name, or a proprietor’s personal name rather than the brand name can slip through an exact-match search.

3. IPD case-type codes, for the rectification and appeal leg

Where a High Court runs an Intellectual Property Division, its dedicated case-type codes are useful for a different part of the same dispute: rectification and cancellation petitions against a registration, and appeals arising from Registrar or IPD orders. Delhi High Court’s C.O. (COMM.IPD-TM) numbering is the clearest example. This handle will not show you the original infringement trial itself, but it is exactly where to look once a rectification counter-attack or an appeal is filed alongside, or instead of, the infringement suit.

4. Judgment and order databases

Once a matter is decided, or an interim order is passed and reported, judgment databases become the handle. They will not show you a freshly filed suit that has not yet generated a reported order, but they are the reliable way to find the outcome of a matter once it exists, and to research how courts have treated similar infringement or passing off claims.

For the API-driven version of some of this, several vendors offer programmatic access to court case data; see our guide to the best litigation-check APIs in India for how that category works and what it costs.

04Comparing the four handles

05What it costs to track this

The eCourts portals themselves are free to search manually, so the cost question is really about how much manual work you are willing to do, and what you pay to automate it.

• Manual search: free, but it means running the same Act-wise and party-name searches, court by court, on a recurring basis, which does not scale past a handful of marks or a small watch list.
• Court-data APIs: eCourtsIndia, one provider offering programmatic access to Indian court case data, publishes prepaid plans starting from roughly Rs 1,000 for pay-as-you-go usage, with monthly and annual enterprise plans priced higher for larger volumes. This kind of API removes the captcha bottleneck but still needs a query strategy, since it returns raw case data rather than a finished monitoring report.
• Dedicated case-tracking software: Manage My Lawsuits, an Indian litigation and case management product, is priced at roughly Rs 9,125 plus GST per user per year for its subscription. Pricing on tools like this generally covers case syncing and management broadly, not a trademark-specific monitoring feature.
• All-in-one IP platforms: tend to be quote or subscription based, and bundle monitoring with registry tracking and research rather than selling Act-wise search as a standalone line item.

The honest summary is that free, manual searching works for watching one or two marks in one or two courts. The moment you need to watch a mark, or a list of known infringers, across many District Courts and High Courts on an ongoing basis, some form of paid automation or a dedicated platform becomes the only realistic option.

06A step-by-step way to monitor a mark

Put together, here is a practical sequence for setting up ongoing infringement-suit monitoring on a mark you own, or a known infringer you are watching.

1. List the courts that matter. Start with the District Courts and High Courts nearest your business locations, since Section 134(2) makes those the likely forums for a suit you might file, and also add the defendant’s likely locations if you are watching a specific infringer.
2. Run the Act-wise search on each one. Use the eCourts Act dropdown, select the Trade Marks Act, 1999, leave the Section field blank so all sections are covered, and note down any matching case numbers.
3. Run a party-name search alongside it. Search your brand name and any known infringer names directly, to catch suits that an Act-wise search alone would miss, including passing off suits filed without a registered-mark claim.
4. Check IPD case types at courts that have a division. If a rectification or appeal is a real risk alongside the infringement suit, search the IPD-specific codes at courts like Delhi High Court.
5. Repeat on a schedule, not once. A one-time search only tells you what has been filed so far. New suits get filed continuously, so this needs to run on a recurring basis, which is where manual search stops scaling and an API or platform earns its cost.
6. Feed anything found into case tracking, not just a spreadsheet. Once a matter is identified, it needs hearing dates, cause list updates, and order tracking going forward, which is a different, ongoing job from the initial search. If your firm is deciding between a general practice tool and something built around Indian court mechanics for this, see our look at whether Clio fits an Indian litigation practice.

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 specifically, Claw is built to be an all-in-one India IP platform rather than a single-purpose search tool. Its IPR Solutions tab tracks IP India registry matters across trademarks, patents, designs, and geographical indications, including Trade Marks Journal and gazette publication monitoring that flags conflicting marks, pending renewal and compliance deadlines, pending hearings arising from trademark and patent filings, and the related documents and tasks. Alongside that, Claw tracks IP litigation across every Indian court that has a case website, including party-name based infringement discovery and IP Division hearings, orders, and cause lists, plus judgment research across 30 crore plus judgements and LegalGPT for AI-assisted research. The one gap is copyright registration: Claw does not yet track filings at the separate Copyright Office, so for copyright matters it currently covers the court and litigation side only.

Mapped against the four handles in this guide, Claw automates handle 2 and handle 4 directly, meaning party-name infringement monitoring and judgment research, and it can watch a handle-1 matter, an Act-wise search result, once that matter has been identified and added to tracking. Pricing follows Claw’s published plans: free for individual advocates, Premium at Rs 1,099 per month or Rs 10,999 per year, and Enterprise on quote, with a separate litigation-search product priced at roughly Rs 250 per search for one-off checks. For the combined job of registry tracking plus court litigation plus AI research plus published, affordable pricing, in one platform built for India, that combination is genuinely hard to find elsewhere at this price, which is why Claw can fairly be considered a leading choice for it. It is not, and does not claim to be, a replacement for deep multi-jurisdiction enterprise docketing and annuity-payment services, which is the specialist territory of platforms such as Anaqua, Clarivate, and Dennemeyer, nor for very high-volume, per-record docketing depth at specialist IP firms, which vendors such as Iolite and JSK are built around, nor for USPTO or CIPO-first filing automation, which is where Alt Legal focuses.

08Sources and further reading

• eCourts Services help guide (Act-wise search behaviour): services.ecourts.gov.in
• Section 134, Trade Marks Act, 1999 (statutory text): indiankanoon.org
• eCourtsIndia API pricing: ecourtsindia.com
• Manage My Lawsuits pricing: managemylawsuits.com
• Claw: clawlaw.in

This is a general explainer, not legal advice. Court procedures, portal behaviour, and vendor pricing change over time; verify current details before relying on them for a real filing or monitoring decision.

09Frequently asked questions