These terms are an agreement between you and BrandKavach ("we", "us"). They apply when you use our website, free tools, free brand check or guides, or sign up for a paid watch. If you sign up for a business or for clients, you confirm that you are allowed to accept these terms for them. If you do not agree, please do not use BrandKavach.
Our Privacy notice explains how we handle personal data.
1. What BrandKavach does
BrandKavach is an automated trademark-watch service for Indian brands. With a paid watch, we:
- check each new issue of the Trade Marks Journal, published by the Indian Trade Marks Registry, for word marks that look or sound like the brand names you give us, focusing on the classes you choose; and
- email you an alert or report when we find a possible match, with a similarity score and an estimated last date to file an opposition.
A plan includes only the features described on the Pricing page at the time you pay. We do not yet send renewal reminders, and we will say so on the Pricing page if we add them.
We also offer free tools (deadline and renewal calculators, a class finder and a similarity checker), a free brand check of recently published marks, and guides.
What we do not do. We do not give legal advice or legal opinions, file oppositions, replies or any other document for you, represent you before the Trade Marks Registry or any court, search the full Trade Marks Register, track the status of applications, or compare logos or other images.
2. Information only, not legal advice
Our alerts, scores, dates, tools and guides are general information. They are not legal advice, and using BrandKavach does not create a lawyer–client or agent–client relationship with anyone. BrandKavach is not a law firm, an advocate or a registered trademark agent.
Whether a mark is "deceptively similar" to yours, and whether to oppose it, are legal questions that depend on facts we do not assess, such as how each mark is used and sold. Before you act, check the official records and consider advice from an advocate or registered trademark agent.
3. We are not IP India
BrandKavach is an independent service. We are not part of, endorsed by, or affiliated with the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (IP India), the Trade Marks Registry or any government body. Our alerts are not official notices. Where our information differs from the official Trade Marks Journal or the Registry's records, the official sources prevail.
4. Limits of our service
We work hard to make BrandKavach useful, but it has real limits:
- We can miss marks. We read the Journal by automated parsing of its PDF files. Text can be misread, entries can be missed, and some issues or parts may reach us late or not at all.
- We can flag false matches. Similarity scores are automated estimates of how alike two names look and sound. A high score does not mean a mark is legally similar, and a low score does not mean it is safe.
- Logos and device marks may not be covered. We compare the words we can read. We do not yet compare images, and the words inside a logo may not be captured.
- Coverage depends on what you give us. We watch only the brand names and classes you list. A conflicting mark in another class, spelling or language may not be flagged.
- Dates are estimates. We calculate opposition deadlines from the Journal's publication date, and our renewal calculator works only from the dates you enter. Official dates and rules prevail.
- Timing is not guaranteed. We aim to send alerts soon after each Journal issue becomes available, but delays can happen.
5. Your responsibilities
You are responsible for:
- your own deadlines and filings, including any opposition, counter-statement, evidence or renewal, and for checking every date in the official records;
- giving us accurate brand names, classes and application numbers, and telling us about changes;
- keeping your email address working and checking alerts, including your spam folder; and
- deciding, yourself or with your adviser, what action to take on any alert.
Do not wait for an alert, or rely on BrandKavach alone, to protect an important mark.
6. Plans, payment and the free first report
Our current plans and prices are on the Pricing page. Prices are in Indian rupees.
- First report free. While our launch offer runs (see the Pricing page), your first alert report under a new watch is free, and billing starts only after that first report.
- How you pay. We send you a payment link, and payments are processed by Razorpay. If we offer it, you may instead pay directly to our UPI ID. We do not store card details and we do not set up automatic debits.
- Paid periods. Monthly and yearly plans are paid in advance for the period you choose. Before a new period starts, we will send you a payment link. If it is not paid, your watch stops at the end of the period already paid for.
- Price changes. If we change a price, the new price applies from your next period, and we will tell you before you are asked to pay it.
7. Cancellation and refunds
- Cancel any time by emailing us at the address on our About page from the email address you signed up with. If you cancel before your first payment, you owe nothing.
- When cancellation takes effect. Your watch continues until the end of the period you have already paid for. After that, we stop sending alerts.
- No pro-rata refunds. We do not refund unused days, weeks or months of a period you have paid for.
- When we do refund. We refund duplicate payments and payments taken in error. If we stop providing a paid watch for a reason other than your breach of these terms, or if you cancel because we materially reduce what a paid plan includes, we refund the unused part of your prepaid period.
- Refund timing. We start approved refunds within 7 working days, to the original payment method. Your bank or payment provider may take longer to show the credit.
8. Acceptable use
When you use BrandKavach, you agree not to:
- give us information you are not entitled to share, or that is false or misleading;
- copy, scrape, resell or republish our reports, index or tools in bulk, or build a competing database from them;
- try to break, overload or get around the security of our website or systems;
- use our alerts or information to harass, threaten or mislead trademark applicants or anyone else; or
- use BrandKavach for anything unlawful.
Trademark agents and advocates on our Agent plan may share reports with their own clients, with these terms and our disclaimers kept intact.
9. Content and rights
The website, tools, software, guides and reports are ours or our licensors'. You may use reports for your own business or, on the Agent plan, for your clients. Information taken from the Trade Marks Journal is public information published by the Trade Marks Registry, and we claim no ownership of it.
You keep all rights in the information you give us. You allow us to use it to run BrandKavach for you, as described in our Privacy notice.
10. Changes, suspension and ending the service
We may change, add or remove features of the free tools, guides and brand check at any time. We may suspend or end your access if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms, or if we have to for legal or security reasons. We will tell you why unless the law or a security risk prevents it. If we end the service altogether, we will give paying customers reasonable notice and refund the unused part of any prepaid period.
11. Our liability
We provide BrandKavach with reasonable care and skill, but we cannot promise that it will be complete, error-free or uninterrupted. To the extent the law allows:
- we are not liable for loss caused by a missed, late or wrong alert or score, by a deadline missed or a filing not made, or by any decision you take, because the service is an information tool and you remain responsible for your filings (section 5);
- we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, such as loss of profit, business, goodwill or a trademark right; and
- our total liability to you for all claims relating to BrandKavach is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim. For free tools, guides and the free brand check, that amount is zero.
Nothing in these terms limits liability for fraud, or any liability or consumer right that cannot be limited or excluded under Indian law.
12. Governing law and disputes
These terms are governed by the laws of India. Please contact us first so we can try to resolve any problem quickly. Subject to the next sentence, the courts at Bengaluru, Karnataka have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute about these terms or BrandKavach. If you are a consumer, nothing in this section limits your right to bring a complaint before a consumer commission or any other forum that the law allows.
13. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms. We will post the new version on this page and change the "updated" date above. If a change materially affects people with an active paid watch, we will email them before it takes effect. If you do not agree with a change, you can cancel; section 7 explains when you get a refund.
14. General
If any part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies. If we do not enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later. These terms, our Privacy notice and the plan details on our Pricing page together form the whole agreement between you and us about BrandKavach.
15. Contact
For questions, complaints or cancellations, email the address shown on our About page. We will reply within 30 days.