Class 35 is the most misunderstood class in Indian trademark practice. Its heading reads: advertising; business management; business administration; office functions. Buried inside it — and this is the part that matters to you — are retail services, wholesale services, and online retail services.

If you sell online, Class 35 is probably part of your filing. Probably. Whether it is the whole of your filing is a different question, and getting that question wrong is the most common filing mistake I see among D2C brands.

What Class 35 actually covers

Class 35 protects services around the selling, not the thing being sold. For an e-commerce business, that means: operating an online store, retail of goods (including other people's goods), advertising and marketing services, business management of retail operations, and the presentation of goods on communication media for retail purposes.

Read that list again and notice what is missing. The goods themselves are not in it. Your private-label kurtas are Class 25. Your handmade soaps are Class 3. Your packaged snacks are Class 30. Class 35 covers the act of retailing; the product classes cover the products. These are two different shelves, and the registry treats them as strangers to each other.

The signboard and the shelves

Think of it this way. Class 35 is the signboard over the shop — the name under which retail happens. The product classes are the goods stacked on the shelves inside. A registration for the signboard stops nobody from selling identical goods under a similar name from their own shop. A registration for the goods stops nobody from opening a store under your name and filling it with other people's products.

Most D2C brands need both the signboard and the shelves, because they both make the product and run the store. Filing only in the product class is the trap I see most: the brand is protected on the garments, but the online retail service — the website, the app, the marketplace presence — sits unprotected in Class 35, open for anyone to use a confusingly similar name for a competing store.

What Class 35 does not cover — the boundaries people miss

Three boundaries, because each one has burned someone.

Payments are not Class 35. Payment processing, digital wallets, and financial services sit in Class 36. If your platform handles transactions as a service — not just accepts payment for your own goods, but offers payment services — that is a different shelf.

Delivery is not Class 35. Transport, logistics, warehousing, and delivery services sit in Class 39. Running your own delivery fleet as a service offering points there.

Manufacturing is not Class 35. If you also manufacture — Class 40 covers treatment of materials and manufacturing services. Most D2C brands outsource manufacturing and never need Class 40, but the ones scaling into their own units should know it exists.

Each of these is its own filing, its own fee, its own examination. The question is never "does my business touch this?" but "is this a service I offer under my brand that a competitor could copy?"

The marketplace-seller wrinkle

One more scenario, because half of Indian e-commerce lives here. You sell exclusively through marketplaces — Amazon, Flipkart, your own listings on someone else's platform. You have no standalone store. Do you need Class 35?

Your product class remains essential — that is where your brand lives on the goods. Class 35 becomes relevant the moment you provide retail services under your brand: your own website or app, curated multi-brand selling, or advertising services for other sellers. If you are purely a manufacturer-wholesaler supplying marketplaces, the product class may genuinely be enough for now. But the day you launch your own storefront, Class 35 moves from optional to urgent — and the filing date starts from that later day, not from your original product-class filing.

How this plays out in examination

Practical note on what happens after you file. Each class is examined on its own. An examiner comparing your Class 35 application looks at earlier marks in Class 35 — retail and advertising services — not at every clothing brand in Class 25. This cuts both ways. It means your Class 35 application is judged against a smaller, more relevant field. It also means a clean Class 25 registration gives you no help at all if someone opposes your Class 35 application with an earlier retail-services mark. The classes do not talk to each other.

So file with both shelves in mind from the start. Product class for what you make. Class 35 for how you sell it. The combined fee — ₹4,500 per class online for startups and small enterprises, ₹9,000 for others — is a fraction of what a rebrand costs after a dispute.

Selling online and unsure which shelves your brand needs? Run your products through our trademark class finder, or talk to ComplyKart's team — we file e-commerce trademarks every week and will map your classes before you spend a rupee on fees.