Thursday, February 3, 2011

No registered trademark? Then be ready to say "We don't have any branches"

Last weekend we visited Hyderabad to meet my cousin and his wife and also to attend ACM India 2011 meet.  One of the major attractions of Hyderabad is its biriyani. We wanted to taste the authentic biriyani of Hyderabad. We heard that Bawarchi at RTC Cross Road (X road) serves very good biriyani. From my cousin's place to Bawarchi, the distance is about 30km. On way to Bawarchi, we saw many other restaurants named Bawarchi. Our cab driver Abdulla told us that these were all new Bawarchi and the original one is at Cross Road. I remember seeing one Bawarchi restaurant opened in Banaswadi main road in Bangalore also two years back. I assumed that this must be one chain of restaurants like Mainland China, Oh Calcutta etc.

After reaching Bawarchi at RTC Cross Road, the first thing that attracted my attention was the big  hoarding they put up announcing that they don't have any branches!  They had similar banner inside the restaurant too.

I've seen the we-don't-have-any-branches message in all Agarwal Sweets, Evergreen Sweets etc Delhi/Noida in and I posted it in my blog a few years back. But those are small shops compared to Bawarchi. This is the problem if we don't register our trademarks. I remember Infosys giving advertisements in  leading newspapers/magazines a few years back that the word Infosys was their trademark and it was illegal to use that word. Probably some companies started using the name Infosys and that's why Infosys was concerned. Without a trademark, imagine every other company with the name Infosys putting up a banner that they don't have any branches! It would have been a disaster with the original Infosys.