The Trade Marks Registry has issued a Public Notice (Ref. No. TMR/Public Notice/2026/4546, dated August 31, 2026) announcing a Special Disposal Drive aimed squarely at long pending trade mark opposition matters where parties are willing to settle or withdraw. 

The drive will run on every working Friday till December 2026, starting from the first Friday of September, that is 4th September 2026. Hearings will be conducted in hybrid mode, so parties can appear either physically before the Registry or virtually through the official link on the IP India portal.

The scheduling itself is organized by the filing year of the underlying application, in ten year blocks. Each Friday carries two sessions, 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM and 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM. 

• Fridays in September: applications filed prior to 2000
• Fridays in October: applications filed between 2001 and 2010
• Fridays in November: applications filed between 2011 and 2020
• Fridays in December: applications filed between 2021 and till date

Parties and their advocates are required to submit settlement deeds or withdrawal requests at least three days before their scheduled hearing, through the online portal or email. They are also expected to check the status of their matter and appear on the assigned date, since non- appearance or non-compliance means the matter will be decided ex parte or on merits, based on whatever is already on record, under the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the Trade Marks Rules, 2017. 

The Registry’s earlier attempts:

This is also not the Registry’s first attempt at this kind of exercise. The Trade Marks Registry issued a public notice on 7th February 2022 asking parties in already settled opposition and rectification matters to notify the relevant Branch office with supporting documents by 20th March 2022, so that final orders could be passed. A further notice on 1st August 2022 announced a dedicated special drive for disposal of IP disputes on similar lines, and the pattern continued into November and December 2022 and February 2023, when the Registry flagged close to 92,820 uncontested opposition matters headed for abandonment under Section 21(2) of the Act. The current drive follows that same underlying approach, but turns it into a recurring, dated schedule spread across four months rather than a single cut off window, which suggests an attempt to make the process more predictable for parties and their counsel than the earlier one-time notices were. 

The size of the problem:

The scale of the problem this drive is responding to is worth putting in numbers. Trademark oppositions in India pending as of February 2022 stood at roughly 182,000, per figures cited by the International Trademark Association, and RTI responses dated 17th March 2025 put the combined pending opposition and rectification matters at over 3,00,000, with many unresolved for 10 to 15 years. Against that backdrop, a drive covering four months and one day of the week is a modest but meaningful start, a way of clearing the oldest and most settlement-ready layer of that number before turning to the rest. 

Another Path Toward Settlement : 

The effort to reduce this backlog, however, need not rest entirely on administrative disposal exercises. Settlement has always depended, at its core, on the willingness of parties to step away from the contest and explore whether a negotiated outcome is possible. Government-led initiatives can play an important role in advancing this process, supported by independent mediation mechanisms that complement these efforts and help create further opportunities for such conversations to emerge and develop. It is within this broader movement towards consensual resolution of trademark disputes that TDRP has emerged as one such initiative. The Trademark Dispute Resolution Portal (TDRP), which is an initiative by Track Second, has been functioning as an established and accessible space for parties in trademark opposition and rectification disputes to pursue mediation towards settlement. The process itself is built to be simple to start: a party can submit a Request for Mediation through TDRP’s online filing form, after which the responding party is automatically notified and brought into the process, without either side needing to navigate a separate court or Registry filing to begin talking. 

TDRP brings a panel of mediators with specific grounding in trademark and IP work, several of them internationally accredited, handling oppositions, rectifications and coexistence negotiations as well. This matters increasingly for brand owners operating through e-commerce platforms or seeking protection under the Madrid Protocol, where a dispute sitting unresolved for years can directly hold up market entry or international filings. For parties with eligible pending matters, the Special Disposal Drive is clearly an opportunity worth considering. IP India’s effort to create a dedicated process for settlement and withdrawal is a constructive development, particularly where disputes may have outlived the commercial reasons for continuing them. Where parties wish to explore resolution through mediation instead, or alongside their broader settlement efforts, TDRP offers another space in which settlement can be considered and conversations can begin. The value of such initiatives lies in recognising that while disagreements may be inevitable, remaining indefinitely caught in them need not be. A society moves forward not merely by creating systems to manage conflict, but also by creating opportunities to resolve it and, ultimately, move beyond it.