The CGPDTM API for trademark search
Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks support is in active development. Join the waitlist to get notified when CGPDTM ships on Signa's unified trademark API.
What is CGPDTM?
The Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (CGPDTM), commonly known as IP India, is the Indian government body responsible for examining and registering trademarks, patents, designs, and geographical indications across India. It operates under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) within the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, with the head office of the Trade Marks Registry in Mumbai and four additional branch offices in Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, and Ahmedabad — each holding territorial jurisdiction over a defined set of Indian states and Union Territories. According to the IP India Annual Report 2024-25, India received more than 5.5 lakh (550,000+) trademark applications in a single financial year, a year-on-year increase of nearly 20% in total IP filings, placing CGPDTM among the most active national trademark offices in the world and the largest in South Asia.
India has been a Madrid Protocol member since July 8, 2013, when it became the 14th G-20 economy to accede. Indian applicants can file an international application through the Indian Trade Marks Registry as the Office of Origin, and inbound International Registrations designating India enter the national phase through CGPDTM with up to 18 months for a provisional refusal. The Trade Marks Act, 1999 (as amended) governs the register, including Chapter IV A which was added specifically to implement Madrid procedures via Sections 36A to 36G. Marks may be filed in any language, but Rule 28 of the Trade Marks Rules, 2017 mandates that any word in a script other than Hindi or English be accompanied by a precise transliteration into Roman script and an English translation — failure to provide these after examiner request results in deemed abandonment. In practice this means CGPDTM's register carries marks in Latin, Devanagari (Hindi, Marathi), and the major Dravidian and other regional scripts (Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, and more), each linked to mandatory Roman-script transliteration metadata.
CGPDTM exposes the register through IP India Public Search at tmrsearch.ipindia.gov.in — a free web UI offering wordmark, Vienna-code, and phonetic search across the live Indian Trade Marks Registry, with eRegister status lookups and a weekly Trademarks Journal published every Monday containing accepted-and-advertised marks subject to a non-extendable four-month opposition window. There is no first-class bulk data feed or public REST API in the sense USPTO ODP or EUIPO eSearch provide; programmatic users today scrape the public-search portal, mirror the weekly Journal PDFs, or contract directly with the office for status data. Signa is building its CGPDTM connector for Q4 2026; on launch it will canonicalize the Indian register, the Trade Marks Act event vocabulary, multi-script mark representations with their mandatory transliterations, and Madrid designations of India into the same unified JSON schema used for USPTO, EUIPO, WIPO, and every other office on the platform.
Unique features
- Five regional Trade Marks Registries — Mumbai (head office, covering Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Goa), Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, and Ahmedabad — each with statutory territorial jurisdiction over a defined set of Indian states and Union Territories that determines where you file
- Massive and rapidly growing corpus — 5.5 lakh+ (550,000+) new trademark applications filed in FY 2024-25 per the IP India Annual Report, year-on-year IP filings up ~20%, placing CGPDTM among the highest-volume national trademark offices in the world
- Madrid Protocol member since 8 July 2013 — India joined as the 14th G-20 economy to accede; the Indian Trade Marks Registry acts as Office of Origin for outbound IRs and processes inbound designations under Sections 36A to 36G of the Trade Marks Act with up to 18 months for provisional refusal
- Multi-script register with mandatory transliteration — marks routinely filed in Latin, Devanagari (Hindi, Marathi), Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, and other regional scripts, and Rule 28 of the 2017 Rules requires a Roman-script transliteration plus English translation for every non-Hindi/non-English word on the record
- Four-month non-extendable opposition window — from the date of publication in the weekly Trademarks Journal; counterstatements then due within two months, with deemed abandonment if missed (one of the more procedurally strict opposition timelines globally)
- Weekly Trademarks Journal — official gazette published every Monday on ipindia.gov.in listing accepted-and-advertised marks; the canonical signal that the opposition clock has started on a given application
- IP India Public Search — free public search portal at tmrsearch.ipindia.gov.in offering wordmark, Vienna-code, and phonetic search across the live register, with the separate eRegister surface for status lookups, but no first-class bulk data feed or public REST API in the USPTO ODP / EUIPO eSearch sense
- 10-year renewable protection term — counted from the filing date under the Trade Marks Act, 1999, with renewals filed at the jurisdictional CGPDTM registry or via WIPO for Madrid-routed marks
CGPDTM API — Frequently asked questions
Everything developers ask before integrating CGPDTM data
Need something else? See our documentation
CGPDTM API basics
Coverage & Indian trademark quirks
Need something else? See our documentation
Get notified when CGPDTM ships on Signa?
Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks support is in active development. Join the waitlist for CGPDTM — and start exploring the offices Signa already supports today.
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