Trademark for Clothing Brands in India: Class 25, Class 35 and the Word-vs-Logo Choice

You have a name people remember, a logo on every tag, and a first drop that sold out faster than you expected. That is exactly when a copycat shows up with a name close enough to confuse your customers and different enough to argue about. A trademark is what turns your brand from a good name into a legal right you can defend.

The short answer: a clothing brand in India should file its name as a word mark in Class 25 first, add Class 35 if it sells through its own store or website, and file the logo separately only when the design itself matters. The government fee is ₹4,500 per class for individuals, startups and small enterprises filing online, or ₹9,000 per class for other applicants, under the First Schedule to the Trade Marks Rules, 2017.

What exactly are you protecting?

A trademark protects the signs that tell a customer where a garment came from: your brand name, your logo, and your tagline. It does not protect the cut of a kurta, the weave of a saree, or the print on a shirt. That side of the work belongs to design registration under the Designs Act, 2000, which protects how a product looks and lasts 10 years, extendable by 5 more. Most fashion founders need both eventually. They do not need both on day one, and confusing the two is how money gets spent in the wrong place.

Think of it this way. Your word mark is your name and your logo is your face. People recognise a face, but they call you by your name, and your name is what travels onto invoices, care labels, marketplace listings and GST bills. Protect the name first. The face can follow.

Which classes does a clothing brand actually need?

India follows the Nice Classification, a system of 45 classes. Classes 1 to 34 cover goods and 35 to 45 cover services. For a fashion label, the map looks like this.

Class 25 is home. It covers clothing, footwear and headgear — everything from sarees and hoodies to shoes and caps. If you file only one class, file this one. Class 35 covers retail services and online selling, which matters the moment you run your own website or store rather than selling only through someone else's platform. Class 18 covers bags and leather goods, and Class 14 covers jewellery and watches. Those two are expansion classes: file them when you genuinely plan to sell those lines, not on a vague someday.

Here is the trap. Protection stops at the classes you file in. A registration in Class 25 does not stop someone from using a similar name for bags in Class 18. Equally, filing five classes on day one burns money on lines you may never launch. File for what you sell now and what you have a dated plan to launch next, and keep the rest for later.

Word mark or logo mark — which one first?

A word mark protects the name itself, in any font, colour or styling. A logo or device mark protects one specific visual version of it. File the logo alone and a rival can use your name in plain text and argue they never copied your design. File the word mark and you hold the name however it is written.

So the order I suggest to most founders is simple. File the word mark first. File the logo next, if the logo is distinctive enough that customers recognise it on its own — a monogram, a symbol, a particular arrangement. If your logo is just your name typed in a nice font, the word mark already does most of the work, and the logo filing can wait until the budget allows. Two filings mean two fees, because every fee is charged per class, per mark.

What does registration cost?

The government fee for filing Form TM-A online is ₹4,500 per class for an individual, a DPIIT-recognised startup or a small enterprise with a Udyam certificate, and ₹9,000 per class for every other applicant, such as a private limited company that is not MSME-registered. Physical filing costs ₹500 more per class in each category. The fee pays for examination, not for a result — an application that gets objected to or abandoned does not earn a refund.

Work it out for your own label. A sole-proprietor founder filing a word mark in Class 25 alone pays ₹4,500 in government fees. Add Class 35 and the total becomes ₹9,000. A private limited company filing the same two classes pays ₹18,000. A professional fee sits on top of that and varies by firm, so budget the two parts separately and ask what the professional fee covers: search, filing, objection replies and hearing attendance are not always in the same quote.

Renewal is a separate, later cost. A registered mark lasts 10 years from the filing date and can be renewed indefinitely in 10-year blocks by filing Form TM-R, at ₹9,000 per class online. Miss the renewal window and you face the restoration route, which costs far more than renewing on time.

How the process runs, step by step

First, search. Run your name through the IP India public search before you spend anything, and check similar names in Class 25, not just identical ones. A name that sounds alike or looks alike can block you just as firmly as an exact match.

Next, file Form TM-A on the IP India portal with the mark, the class or classes, and the applicant's correct legal name. That last detail matters more than founders expect. File in the wrong name — a personal name when the business is a company, or an old partnership name — and you will pay later to fix the record.

Then comes examination. An examiner checks the application against the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and earlier marks, and may raise objections, often for lack of distinctiveness or similarity to an existing mark. You answer with evidence and argument. Clear the examination and the mark is published in the Trade Marks Journal, where anyone has four months to oppose it. No opposition, or an opposition you win, and the certificate follows. The whole journey commonly takes well over a year, and objections or an opposition stretch it further, so filing early matters more than filing perfectly.

Why marketplaces make this urgent

If you sell on Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra or Meesho, your trademark application number is often the key to brand protection tools on the platform — Amazon's Brand Registry, for instance, works off a pending or registered mark. Without it, getting a copycat listing taken down is slower and harder, and you argue from a weaker position. The same logic applies to Instagram shops and your own website: a filed mark gives a takedown notice weight that an unfiled name simply does not carry.

There is a second, quieter reason. A name that goes viral before it is filed is a name someone else can file first. India follows a first-to-file system in practice for most disputes, and while prior use counts, proving it costs time and money that a timely filing avoids. File before the big drop, not after it.

Five mistakes clothing founders keep making

One, filing only the logo and assuming the name is covered. It is not. Two, filing in the wrong applicant name and discovering the mismatch during a funding round or a marketplace verification. Three, skipping the search and falling in love with a name that already belongs to someone in Class 25. Four, filing too many classes on day one and draining the budget that should have gone into the word mark. Five, treating registration as a one-time job and forgetting the 10-year renewal — a lapsed mark is an open invitation.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use ™ before my trademark is registered? Yes. The ™ symbol simply claims the name as your mark, and you can use it from the day you start using the name. The ® symbol is different: use it only after registration, since using it for an unregistered mark is an offence under the Trade Marks Act.

Does one filing protect my brand across India? Yes, a trademark registered in India covers the whole country. It does not extend abroad. For sales outside India, you need separate filings or an international application through the Madrid Protocol, using the Indian filing as the base.

What if someone is already using a similar name for clothes? Get the search done first and take advice before filing. If the earlier mark is registered, filing anyway usually wastes the fee. If the other party is merely using an unregistered name, prior use and the similarity of the goods decide the fight, and that is a judgement call, not a formality.

Can I file before I launch? Yes. You can file on a "proposed to be used" basis, which is the sensible route for a label still in sampling. Just remember that a mark filed and then never used can be challenged for removal later, so launch within a reasonable time.

Do I need a separate mark for my label and my store name? If they differ, yes. Each distinct name needs its own filing. If your store trades under the same name as the label, one word mark in the right classes covers both.

A clothing brand is built twice: once in the customer's mind and once on the register. The first takes seasons of work. The second takes one careful filing, done early, in the right class, in the right name. If you are choosing a name for your next collection, search it first, file the word mark in Class 25, and add Class 35 when your own store goes live. For help with the filing itself, see our trademark registration service, and if you want to check a name before you commit to it, read our guide to the IP India trademark public search. When the mark is registered, keep the renewal diary safe — our guide to trademark renewal in Form TM-R explains the grace period, and if someone objects to your application, our objection vs opposition guide sets out the two different fights.