Trademark Classes and Multi-Class Filing: What the Fee Actually Buys

Quick answer

Classification decides what a trademark costs and what it protects. Section 18(2) allows one application across several classes but makes the fee payable in respect of each such class, and the First Schedule adds that the fee is for each class and for each mark. Classes are the NICE Classification, adopted by Rule 20(1) by reference to WIPO's current edition. Crucially, class membership does not decide similarity under Section 11, and Rule 37 forbids adding goods after filing — so the specification you file is, in substance, the one you keep.

Who this is for

Founders about to file a first mark and deciding how many classes to pay for. Businesses that filed narrowly and have since launched adjacent products. Anyone who has been quoted "₹4,500 for a trademark" and wants to know why the invoice came to three times that. And anyone whose examination report cites a mark in a class they never filed in, wondering how that is possible.

If you have not run a search yet, do that first — trademark search before filing covers why, and the classification decision below is much easier once you know what is already on the register.

Where classification comes from

The Act is short about it. Section 7(1): "The Registrar shall classify goods and services, as far as may be, in accordance with the International classification of goods and services for the purposes of registration of trade marks." Section 7(2): "Any question arising as to the class within which any goods or services falls shall be determined by the Registrar whose decision shall be final."

Two things are worth noticing in those two sentences.

The Act never names NICE. It says "the International classification". The word "NICE" appears nowhere in the Trade Marks Act, 1999. It enters through the Rules — Rule 20(1): "Classification of goods and service for the purpose of registration of trademark, the goods and services shall be classified as per current edition of 'the International Classification of goods and services (NICE classification)' published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)."

That reference is dynamic. "Current edition", with no number. India does not adopt a numbered edition and then wait for an amendment; the Rules track whatever WIPO publishes. WIPO's current edition is NCL(13-2026), in force from 1 January 2026. India acceded to the Nice Agreement on 7 June 2019, with effect from 7 September 2019.

Section 8 pairs with this: the Registrar may publish an alphabetical index of the classification, and goods or services not in that index are classified by the Registrar under Section 7(2). Rule 20(2) puts it more strongly: "The Registrar shall publish a class wise and an alphabetical index of such goods and services, including goods and services of Indian origin."

One honest note. We could not find that published index anywhere on IP India's current Trade Marks navigation. The Draft Manual asserted in 2015 that it had been published and put on the office website; there is no such page today. What IP India's menu does offer, under "Search Goods & Services Classification", is an outbound link to EUIPO's TMclass tool. So the practical classification resource an Indian applicant is pointed to by the Indian Registry is a European one. That is a genuine gap, and we would rather name it than paper over it.

Forty-five classes, and where the split falls

IP India's Basics of Trademarks page states it directly: "Trade marks are registered for specific goods or services, which are categorised into classes under the Nice Classification system. Classes 1–34: Goods Classes 35–45: Services Selecting the correct class and accurately describing goods or services is essential for effective protection."

That is the one official Indian source for the 45-class structure. It gives no edition and no class headings.

Where are the class headings, then? Not in the Rules. The Trade Marks Rules, 2017 as gazetted contain exactly three Schedules — First (Fees), Second (Forms) and Third (Forms). There is no Fourth Schedule and no class list of any kind. A search for "fourth" across all 97 gazette pages returns nothing. The class list was a Fourth Schedule to the 2002 Rules, which the 2017 Rules repealed; the current Rules replaced the list with the dynamic reference in Rule 20(1). If a source tells you the 2017 Rules contain a Fourth Schedule of classes, it is quoting the wrong decade.

(There is one curiosity worth knowing so you are not confused by it. Rules 116 and 118 of the 2017 Rules refer to a "Forth Schedule" — misspelled — that was never notified. It concerns costs, not classes.)

The fee, and why the arithmetic surprises people

Section 18(2): "A single application may be made for registration of a trade mark for different classes of goods and services and fee payable therefor shall be in respect of each such class of goods or services."

The First Schedule entry for the TM-A application carries its own note: "(Note: Fee is for each class and for each mark)". In the gazette that note sits as a separate line under the whole entry, applying to both rate rows.

So the fee table works like this, per class, per mark:

And the multiplication is where budgets break:

A word mark and a logo are two marks. Filing both across three classes is six entry fees, not two and not three. That single point accounts for most of the gap between what people expect a trademark to cost and what it costs.

Two further cautions on the fee columns:

• The lower figure in each pair is e-filing. Every entry in the First Schedule is priced twice, and physical filing costs more. Quoting ₹4,500 without saying "e-filing" understates the physical fee by ₹500.
• The Schedule states the category "Individual / Startup / Small Enterprise" and defines none of them. Neither does Rule 11. In practice the Registry works from Udyam/MSME or DPIIT recognition, but that is a practical gloss on how the concession is evidenced, not a documented statutory requirement, and we do not present it as one. A partnership firm, LLP, company or trust is not an "individual" and pays the lower rate only if it independently qualifies.

There is more on the full lifecycle cost in trademark registration cost in India.

The thing that catches everyone: class does not decide similarity

This is the single most useful idea in the article, and it is a negative proposition — which is why so little content states it.

"Similar goods or services" is defined nowhere in the Trade Marks Act, 1999. The only similarity definition in the Act is Section 2(1)(h), "deceptively similar", and it is about marks, not goods: "A mark shall be deemed to be deceptively similar to another mark if it so nearly resembles that other mark as to be likely to deceive or cause confusion."

And no provision makes class membership decisive of similarity. Sweep every occurrence of "class", "classes" and "classification" in the Act and they appear in exactly six places: Section 7, Section 8, Section 18(2), Section 36F(2), Section 60, and the rule-making power in Section 157. Classification never appears in Section 11, never in Section 29, and never anywhere similarity is assessed.

What Section 11(1) actually turns on is "a likelihood of confusion on the part of the public, which includes the likelihood of association with the earlier trade mark." The Act's own vocabulary for goods is commercial, not classificatory — Section 15(3) speaks of "the same or similar goods or services or description of goods or description of services"; Section 40(1) of "same description of goods or services" and "goods or services or description of goods or services which are associated with each other."

Even the examiner's search is framed that way. Rule 33(1) directs a search among earlier marks "in respect of the same goods or services or similar goods or services" — a goods test, not a class test. And the Draft Manual notes that while the system automatically selects classes for the search based on the application, "The Examiner may also add more class(es) for search."

Two practical consequences.

1. Filing in class 25 does not immunise you from a citation raised over a mark in class 18. If the goods are commercially proximate, they can be "similar" whatever the class numbers say.
2. Conversely, a mark sitting in the same class as yours is not automatically a problem. Class 9 alone runs from computer software to fire extinguishers. Same class, entirely different trade.

So the right question when scoping classes is never "which class number covers me". It is "what do I actually sell, who is my public, and what would confuse them". Then classes follow.

One caveat about a provision people cite here. Section 36F(2) says "The indication of classes of goods and services given by the applicant shall not bind the Registrar with regard to the determination of the scope of the protection of the trade mark." That reads beautifully for this argument — but Section 36F sits in Chapter IVA and applies to international registrations under the Madrid Protocol. It is not a general rule and we do not present it as one.

Scoping the specification: the two rules that actually govern

Rule 23(5) — the anti-class-heading provision

The gazette text:

In the case of an application for registration in respect of all the goods or services included in a class or of a large variety of goods or services in a class, the Registrar may refuse to accept the application unless he is satisfied that the specification is justified by the use of the trademark which the applicant has made or intends to make if and when it is registered: Provided that while making an application for registration of a trademarks, the names of goods and services stated in the application shall, as far as may be, correspond to those given in the classification of the goods and services published by the registrar under sub-rule (2) of rule 20.

That proviso — the requirement that your wording correspond to the published classification — is missing from IP India's own HTML rules page. So is the proviso to Rule 23(6). We read both from the gazette. More on that below, because it matters beyond this article.

The Registry's draft practice guidance sets out how Rule 23(5) is applied. An application "may not claim as part of the specification of goods and/or services a range of goods or services in a particular class which, in the Registrar's opinion, is unrealistically broad in that in commercial terms it is highly unlikely that the applicant would deal in or provide that range of goods or services." Its worked example is class 9: file the bare class heading and the examiner may consider the specification unrealistically broad, at which point you either affirm intention to use across the whole specification by affidavit, or amend to "a more commercially realistic range of items."

The same guidance is blunt about certain phrasings: "Use of the expressions, 'all goods', 'all services', 'all other goods' and 'all other services' in a specification of goods and/or services in respect of which registration is sought is prohibited."

And it gives two drafting examples worth internalising: "In Class 7, claims to 'machines' without further qualification should be objected to", and applications in class 9 making "vague and generalized reference to 'electric, electrical and/or electronic apparatus, devices, equipment and instruments'" should likewise be objected to.

Note, though, that class headings are not uniformly bad. The same guidance treats the headings for classes 42, 43 and 44 as "acceptable", and splits class 45 — "'Personal and social services rendered by others to meet the needs of individuals' is considered too vague" while "'security services for the protection of property and individuals' is sufficiently precise and will not attract an objection."

(All of that guidance is expressly a draft, dated 10 March 2015, and it yields to the Act and Rules where inconsistent. It is also written against the 2002 Rules — it cites Rule 25(15) where the current provision is Rule 23(5). We cite the substance and the current rule number, never the Manual's.)

Rule 37 — you cannot add goods later

This is the constraint that makes the initial scoping decision matter, and it is stated in one proviso:

Provided, no such amendment shall be permitted which shall have the effect of substantially altering the trademark applied for or substitute a new specification of goods or services not included in the application as filed.

Rule 37 otherwise lets an applicant correct or amend "whether before or after acceptance of his application but before the registration of the trademark", on Form TM-M. But the door only swings one way: you can narrow, you cannot broaden.

The only apparent exception is Rule 23(6), and it is narrower than it first appears. Where the Registrar determines that the goods or services applied for fall in classes in addition to those applied for, the applicant "shall restrict the specification of goods or services to the class or classes already applied for or amend the application to add additional class or classes by filing an application on Form TM-M and by payment of the appropriate fee" — with a proviso (also missing from the HTML page) allowing the Registrar to "permit the correction of class by filing the request on Form TM-M" where all the goods fall in a different class from the one specified. That re-homes goods already claimed. It does not let you claim new ones.

The Draft Manual describes the same limit at the hearing stage: an officer may allow deletion of conflicting goods "but in no case he shall allow enlargement, addition or substitution of goods/services originally mentioned in the application."

After registration, Section 60(1) closes the same door on the register: the Registrar shall not make an amendment which would have the effect of adding goods or classes, or of antedating the registration.

What this means in practice. If you are launching a product line in nine months, you have two choices, and only two: include it in the specification now and be able to justify an intention to use it, or file a fresh application later at a fresh fee and a fresh priority date. There is no third option where you quietly widen the specification during prosecution.

Division: the move that saves a multi-class filing

Multi-class filing has one obvious risk. If one class attracts a citation, does the whole application wait?

No — you divide it. And the rule for this is one that a great deal of published content gets wrong.

Division of a single or multi-class application is the proviso to Section 22, read with Rule 23(3) and Rule 108. Rule 23(3): "An amendment to divide an application under proviso to section 22 shall be made in Form TM-M." Rule 108 then sets out the mechanics:

(1) Where an application is made in Form TM-M under proviso to section 22 for the division of a single pending application, the registrar may, on payment of a divisional fee, divide such application into two or more separate applications. (2) In case of division of application, The Registrar shall treat each divisional application as a separate application for registration with the same filing date as the initial application. (3) Any time limit for any action by the applicant in relation to the initial application at the time of division shall be applicable to each new separate application created by division irrespective of the date of the division. (4) … the Registrar shall assign an additional separate new serial number … cross-referenced with the initial application. (5) For the removal of doubt, it is clarified that no new registration shall be effected when a single application is divided.

Form TM-M itself carries the line "Division of an Application under rule 108" and a field for the class to be divided.

Rule 27(2) is a different thing entirely. It divides a series application into separate marks under Section 15(3), and it carries a timing limit — "At any time before the publication of the application in the Journal" — that belongs to series division only. Content that cites Rule 27(2) for multi-class division is transplanting that limit onto a rule that does not have it. (Multi-class division follows Section 22, which permits amendment "at any time, whether before or after acceptance … but before the registration", and Rule 108, which speaks of "a single pending application".)

In opposition, division is not optional. Rule 42 makes that explicit:

• 42(2) — a notice of opposition against a multi-class application "shall bear the fee in respect of each class in relation to which the opposition is filed."
• 42(3) — where opposition is filed for some classes only, "the application for remaining class or classes shall not proceed to registration until a request in Form TM-M for division of the application together with the divisional fee is made by the applicant."
• 42(4) — the unopposed classes proceed after that division.

So a three-class application opposed in one class stalls entirely until you divide. Knowing that in advance turns a nasty surprise into a scheduled ₹1,800 filing.

One more definitional point worth knowing: Rule 2(1)(h) defines a "divisional application" to cover both "an application containing a request for the division of goods or services in a class" and a division across separate classes. So you can also split goods within a class — useful where a citation touches part of one class's specification and not the rest.

What a multi-class application looks like in practice

Rule 107 is the operative housekeeping rule and it answers three common questions at once:

• 107(1) — the specification "shall set out the classes in consecutive numerical order beginning with the lowest number and indicate in each class the goods or services appropriate to that class."
• 107(2) — when ordered to be advertised, multi-class applications "shall be published in a separate section of the Journal."
• 107(3) — "The Registrar shall issue a single certificate of registration" for an application under Section 18(2) that proceeds to registration.

So: one application number, one certificate, several fees, and — if things go wrong in one class — the option to split into several applications that all keep the original filing date.

And on that filing date: Section 23(1) provides that an accepted mark is registered as of the date of the making of the application, that date being deemed the date of registration. (The same sub-section says the Registrar shall register "within eighteen months of the filing of the application" where the application is unopposed and accepted — words inserted by Act 40 of 2010 with effect from 8 July 2013. We are not going to present that as a promised timeline, because nothing we captured evidences it in practice.) Section 23(3) runs the other way: where registration is not completed within twelve months from the date of application by reason of the applicant's default, the Registrar may treat the application as abandoned after notice.

A worked example

A company sells one product today — a protein bar — and intends to launch a branded app and a subscription service within the year. It has a word mark and a logo. It is not an individual, a startup or a small enterprise.

Option A — file everything now. Word mark and logo, three classes each (say the food class, the software class and the relevant services class). That is 2 marks × 3 classes = 6 entry fees × ₹9,000 = ₹54,000 in government fee, e-filed.

Option B — file the word mark in one class now. ₹9,000. Cheapest today.

What Option B actually costs later. The app and the service cannot be added to that application: Rule 37's proviso forbids substituting a new specification not included as filed, and Section 60(1) forbids adding classes on the register after registration. So the later filings are fresh applications at the then-current fee, with fresh priority dates. Between now and then, anyone who files a similar mark in those classes becomes an "earlier trade mark" under the Explanation to Section 11 — an application counts, not just a registration.

The honest middle. File the word mark across the classes you can genuinely justify an intention to use in, and defer the logo if the logo is still being redesigned. That is not a rule of law, it is a judgement about which risk is larger, and it depends on how distinctive the word is on its own and how far the logo is from a plain rendering of it. What is not a judgement call is the arithmetic: every class and every mark is another fee, and the specification you file is the specification you keep.

Common mistakes

• Assuming one class covers "the business". Classes cover goods and services, not businesses. A company that manufactures, sells online and offers a related service is often three classes.
• Treating a word mark and a logo as one filing. They are two marks and two sets of fees.
• Filing the class heading for safety. Rule 23(5) is aimed squarely at this, and it puts the burden on you to justify the breadth by use or intended use.
• Using "all goods" or "all services". The Registry's own guidance prohibits the phrase.
• Assuming class number decides conflict. It does not; Section 11(1) turns on likelihood of confusion, and "similar goods" is undefined.
• Planning to add goods later. The proviso to Rule 37 forbids it.
• Citing Rule 27(2) for multi-class division. That is series division under Section 15(3), with its own timing limit. Multi-class division is the proviso to Section 22 with Rules 23(3) and 108.
• Budgeting one opposition fee for a multi-class mark. Rule 42(2) charges per class opposed.
• Believing Form TM-C is a search certificate. Rule 22(1) is a certificate under Section 45(1) of the Copyright Act, 1957, for registering an artistic work as copyright — the Copyright Office's trade-mark NOC. It is not clearance for a trade mark application.
• Quoting an entry number from the fees page. The IP India website groups fees by form into eight blocks; the gazetted First Schedule numbers 23 entries. They do not line up, and the amounts are identical either way — so cite the Schedule and the form, not a bare number.

A note on sources, because it changed how we wrote this

IP India publishes the Trade Marks Rules, 2017 at two places: an HTML page, and the gazette PDF (G.S.R. 199(E), 6 March 2017) reachable from the Rules resources page.

They are not the same document. The HTML page returns a normal response with a large, plausible body of rule text — and silently omits provisos. We hand-verified genuine substantive omissions in Rules 22, 23, 26, 33 and 42. Two of those omissions are load-bearing for this article: both provisos to Rule 23 — the one requiring your goods wording to correspond to the published classification, and the one letting the Registrar permit a correction of class — are simply absent from the HTML page.

Checking a source's response code, or even its byte count, would not have caught that. Only reading the gazette alongside it did. Every rule quoted above is from the gazette.

What to do next

1. Write down what you sell today, in plain commercial language. Not class numbers. Products, services, who buys them.
2. Add what you will genuinely be selling within the year, and be honest about "genuinely" — Rule 23(5) puts the burden of justifying breadth on you.
3. Map that to classes, then check the register in each of them and in the commercially adjacent ones, because class is not the similarity test. Our trademark search does both halves.
4. Price it properly: number of marks × number of classes × the rate for your applicant type, e-filing column.
5. Decide what to defer, knowing that deferral means a new application at a new priority date, not an amendment.

If you would rather have someone scope the specification with you and tell you where a class is not earning its fee, that is what the trademark class finder service is for.

Sources and currency

Applies to: India. Trade Marks Act, 1999 (Act 47 of 1999) as consolidated on 1 June 2026, read with the Trade Marks Rules, 2017 as gazetted (G.S.R. 199(E), 6 March 2017). First Schedule fees as published by IP India and read on 19 August 2026. Rules text read from the gazette on 20 August 2026.

Every section, rule and fee here was read from the bare Act on India Code and from the Trade Marks Rules, 2017 as gazetted. The gazette PDF was used deliberately in preference to IP India's HTML rules page, because that page silently omits provisos — including both provisos to Rule 23, which are central to this article. The Draft Manual is cited as practice guidance only; it is expressly a draft that yields to the Act and Rules, and it is written against the 2002 Rules, so its form and rule numbers are superseded. No NICE edition is attributed to IP India, because Rule 20(1) refers dynamically to whatever WIPO currently publishes and no IP India page names an edition.

• Trade Marks Act, 1999 (Act 47 of 1999), consolidated as on 1 June 2026 — Sections 2(1)(h), 7, 8, 11, 18(2), 22, 23, 36F(2) and 60
• Trade Marks Rules, 2017 as gazetted — G.S.R. 199(E), Gazette of India Extraordinary No. 159, 6 March 2017. Rules 2, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 33, 34, 37, 42, 105, 107 and 108, and the First Schedule
• First Schedule to the Trade Marks Rules 2017 — forms and official fees as displayed by IP India
• IP India — Basics of Trademarks, stating that classes 1 to 34 are goods and 35 to 45 are services
• WIPO — Nice Classification, current edition NCL(13-2026) in force from 1 January 2026
• WIPO Lex — Nice Agreement Contracting Parties, recording India's accession on 7 June 2019, in force 7 September 2019
• EUIPO TMclass — the classification search tool IP India's own menu links to
• A draft of Manual of Trade Marks Practice and Procedure (IP India), 10 March 2015 — practice guidance only, expressly a draft, and written against the superseded 2002 Rules