IP strategy is not a document. It is four decisions a business keeps making: what is worth owning, where to own it, what to stop paying for, and what the whole portfolio is actually for.
Most Indian businesses do not have an IP problem. They have an IP decision problem — nobody has decided what the portfolio is for, so filings accumulate by habit, renewals get paid by reflex, and the one thing that actually protects the business was never registered at all.
Strategy imported from a US or EU playbook fails here for four specific reasons. Each one changes what is worth filing.
An Indian registration protects you in India and nowhere else. The Madrid Protocol and the PCT are filing routes that buy you time and a single point of entry — they are not global rights. Every country you care about is a separate decision with a separate cost.
Territoriality; Madrid Protocol and PCT as filing mechanisms.Section 3(d) of the Patents Act 1970 blocks a new form of a known substance unless it shows enhanced efficacy. Section 3(k) excludes a computer programme per se, algorithms and business methods. A patent granted in the United States can fail here on subject matter alone, which makes the Indian claim a separate strategic question rather than a translation exercise.
Patents Act 1970, ss. 3(d) and 3(k).Patentees and licensees must tell the Patent Office whether the invention is being worked commercially in India. Since the Patents (Amendment) Rules 2024 this is filed on Form 27 once every three financial years, within six months of the period closing. For patents granted in FY 2022‑23 the current window closes 30 September 2026.
Patents Act 1970, s. 146; Patents (Amendment) Rules 2024 — verified 3 Sep 2026.Where a copyright assignment does not state a term, the Copyright Act deems it five years. Where it does not state a territory, it is presumed to cover India only. Most commissioning contracts state neither — so the design, the code or the campaign you paid for quietly reverts, and nobody notices until a diligence round.
Copyright Act 1957, ss. 19(5) and 19(6).Direct answers, written to be quoted. Where the honest answer is “it depends”, we say what it depends on.
A written answer to four questions: what the business must own to keep selling, which of those things are registrable and which are better kept secret, which jurisdictions are worth paying for, and which existing registrations are no longer earning their renewal fee.
If a document does not change what you file next quarter and what you stop paying for, it is a summary, not a strategy.
Fewer than most portfolios contain. The right number is the one where every registration maps to something the business sells, a territory it sells in, or a specific risk it is buying down.
Counting registrations is a vanity metric. A portfolio of six that covers the actual product and the actual markets beats a portfolio of forty that grew by habit.
When the class no longer matches anything you sell, when the territory is one you have left, when the mark has been replaced by a newer one, or when the registration was defensive against a competitor who no longer exists.
Renewals are the only IP cost that recurs forever, and the only one nobody reviews. Almost every portfolio we see is paying for at least one thing it does not need.
Work backwards from revenue and manufacture, not from ambition. File where you sell, where you manufacture, where your distributors are, and where a copy would be made — in that order.
A useful discipline: for every country on the list, name the specific commercial event that would make you glad you filed. If you cannot, take it off.
Often not. A patent is a twenty-year negotiation with a public register that costs money every year and only pays back if you are willing and able to enforce it. For many businesses the trade mark, the design registration and a tight set of contracts do more work for less money.
The honest test is whether you would actually sue. If the answer is no, the patent is a certificate, not an asset.
A law firm files, prosecutes and litigates — it acts on decisions. A strategy practice decides what is worth filing, what it is worth, and what to do with it once you hold it.
The work overlaps, and plenty of businesses need both. The distinction matters at the point of hiring: if you already know what you want filed, you need a filing practice. If you are not sure what you own or what it is for, filing first is the expensive order.
Registrations in the operating company's name rather than a founder's; written assignments from every contractor, agency and employee who created anything; no unlicensed third-party material in the product; and a single schedule listing all of it with owner, status and next renewal date.
Investors rarely value IP upward. They discount for mess. The schedule exists to remove the discount.
When the advantage is not detectable in the shipped product, when it would outlive a twenty-year term, or when publishing the claim would teach a competitor more than the monopoly is worth.
A patent is a bargain: you disclose, and in exchange you get a time-limited right to exclude. If the disclosure costs more than the exclusion earns, do not make the bargain. India has no standalone trade secret statute, so the protection is built from contracts, access control and confidentiality obligations.
A present-tense assignment of everything created under the agreement, stated to run for the full term of the rights and for all territories; a warranty that nothing delivered infringes a third party; and clarity on what happens to jointly created material.
The Copyright Act's five-year and India-only defaults are the reason the term and territory must be written down. Silence is not neutral — it picks a side, and it is not yours.
Three tests. Coverage: does every product line and every revenue territory have something protecting it? Cleanliness: is every registration in the right name with a live renewal? Cost of carry: what does the portfolio cost annually, and which registrations are not tied to anything you sell?
None of these requires a valuation. All three are answerable from the registers and your own contracts.
Nothing gated, nothing stored on our side. Bring the result to the call.
These are not Platinova client matters. They are the public record.
Longer pieces by Nayan Rawal.
This page explains how the law and the market generally work in India. It is general information, not legal advice on your situation, and the position can change. Before acting, take advice on your own facts.