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: Coca-Cola India respectively and therefore are worth fighting over, explain industry sources. Both these instances point towards the increasing number of trademark infringements that are rocking corporate India. According to a survey by consulting firm KPMG India, thefts of intellectual property rights and deceptions related to e-commerce and IT pose the greatest risk of frauds for Indian corporations in the next three years.

According to Diljeet Titus, managing partner of law firm Titus & Co, the number of intellectual property cases is increasing by 25% year-on-year. “There is outright passing of intellectual property, infringement, parties overstepping trademarks, and design similarities in liquor or soft drink brands,” he said.

Analysts are of the view that with Indian companies increasingly looking at international markets, brands have become highly valuable. “You can’t go anywhere without a brand. And acquiring or establishing new ones is a very expensive proposition,” added Titus.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that in such cases, where products were sold many years ago, Indian companies didn’t visualise that their brands could one day have an international market and therefore their agreements lacked clarity on the subject of IPR and operations in foreign lands.

“Earlier Indian companies were restricted within the geographic boundaries of India. But when they realise that their foreign partners are using their brands, they are left in a fix. India is such a large service economy that brand value surpasses financial aspects in some cases,” said Deepankar Sanwalka, executive director (head, forensic) of KPMG. What is interesting is that in both cases Indian parties had stumbled upon the fact that their MNC parties are registering their brands in foreign countries while they were planning to launch those brands abroad themselves.

The writing on the wall is clear. Since businesses are increasingly being valued on the worth of their brands, companies need to guard their intellectual property with all their might. Summed up Sanwalka, “Companies need to go through the stages of protection, development and commercialisation of their intellectual property to extract the maximum value out of their brands.”