India Trademark Journal Watch - MarkWatch IN

India trademark journal watch for brand owners and IP firms. MarkWatch IN reads each new issue of the Indian Trade Marks Journal, compares every advertised word mark with your watch-list, and returns the marks that look or sound like yours together with the opposition deadline (Journal date plus four months) and a link to the exact PDF page. Run it on an Apify schedule and read the results in the dataset, an HTML report, Slack, email or your own system.

It is built for Indian IP law firms and trademark agents who watch many marks for clients, D2C and FMCG brands with an in-house legal team, foreign IP firms with Indian portfolios, and legal-tech teams that want the Journal as structured data (export mode).

Actor page: https://apify.com/leons0016/india-trademark-journal-watch

Use cases

• Trademark watch in India. Check new Journals for marks similar to your brands before the four-month opposition window closes.
• Trademark opposition deadlines at a glance. Every match carries the opposition deadline and the days left (calculated in Indian Standard Time).
• Trademark monitoring in India for IP firms. Watch hundreds of marks with per-mark classes and client references, with one schedule per client.
• Clearance screening. Re-check older Journals (up to 17 back, about the opposition window) for a new mark you plan to file.
• Journal data export. Turn a whole Journal, or selected classes, into clean rows you can download as CSV, JSON or Excel.

Why use it

• The Journal is published as several class-range PDF files per issue; this Actor reads them for you and keeps a list of what it has already reported, so a re-run never repeats or re-charges a match.
• Transparent, rule-based scoring (no AI): spelling similarity, sound similarity, Indian spelling variants (Shree/Sri/Shri, Kh/K, Z/J, long vowels), shared words and containment, plus class rules used in Indian opposition practice. Each match shows the score and why it matched.
• Devanagari marks (for example a Hindi spelling of SURYA) are transliterated before comparing.
• You pay per event (a small check fee per run, a fee per watched mark per Journal, a fee per new match), so cost follows the size of your portfolio. There is no annual contract.
• It reads only public documents, respects robots.txt and identifies itself in the User-Agent.

How to use

1. Open the Actor and fill Watched marks, one per line: MARK | classes | reference, for example TATA TEA | 30 | Client-17.
2. Press Start. The first run checks the newest Journal (set Also check earlier Journals to 17 on the first run to cover every Journal that is still open to opposition).
3. Click Save as new task, one task per client or portfolio. The task keeps its own history.
4. Add a Schedule to the task (the Journal appears weekly). Use the cron 0 30 10 * * 1-5 with the time zone Asia/Kolkata for 10:30 on weekdays, and enable the schedule: new schedules start disabled and an Actor must have been run once before it can be scheduled.
5. Open Integrations on the task and add Slack, Gmail or a webhook on "Run succeeded" (and, if you like, on "Run failed").

Input

Field	What it does
Mode	watch compares your marks with new entries; export outputs every entry of a Journal.
Watched marks	One mark per line, optional classes after a bar (29,30, 29-32, 29 30), optional reference after a second bar. Lines starting with # are ignored. Prefill: `AMUL
Watch-list CSV (URL)	Optional public https link to a CSV with the columns mark, classes, reference. Max 5,000 rows and 2 MB.
Default classes	Classes for marks without their own classes. Empty means all classes.
Sensitivity	Strict (score of at least 85), Balanced (75, recommended) or Broad (65), out of 100.
Class scope	Same class only, same and related classes (for example 29/30/31/32/33/43 for food), or all classes.
Words to ignore	Generic words removed before comparing, for example FOODS or INDIA.
Your applicant names	Entries filed by these applicants are never reported.
Ignore watched marks shorter than	1 to 10 characters, default 2.
Also check earlier Journals	0 to 17 Journals that this task has not checked yet.
Specific Journal numbers	Re-check or export particular issues, for example 2283.
Export only these classes	Export mode only.
Max results per run	1 to 100,000, default 500. Protects your budget.
Webhook URL, Slack incoming webhook	Optional. The run summary is posted to the webhook; Slack gets up to 10 matches.
Use shared parsed-Journal cache	On by default. Off parses the official PDFs inside your run.
State key	Only needed when two tasks must share history.
Save parse debug data	Writes lines the parser could not assign to the key-value store.

Sample input:

{
  "mode": "watch",
  "watchedMarks": ["SHREE GANESH | 30 | Client-17", "AMUL | 29,30,32"],
  "sensitivity": "balanced",
  "classScope": "related",
  "backfillJournals": 0,
  "maxResultsPerRun": 500
}

The input is checked before anything is charged. A line without mark text, a class outside 1 to 45, an unreadable CSV or a non-https link stops the run with a clear message and no charge.

Output

Every run writes to the dataset and to the key-value store.

• Matches (default view): days left, score, watched mark, Journal mark, class, applicant, agent, application number, Journal number and date, opposition deadline, reasons, PDF page link and goods.
• Journal entries (export mode): application number, filing date, mark, mark type, class, applicant, applicant city, agent, used-since, office, Journal number and date, PDF page link, goods.
• Run summary: one uncharged row per run, always the last row, with the run date, mode, Journals checked, entries scanned, watched marks, matches, skipped marks (free plan), stop reason, cache use, source errors, warnings and the events charged. When there is no match, the summary is the only row.
• OUTPUT (JSON) holds the same summary plus the top 20 matches. REPORT (HTML) is a one-page report with a score badge (85 or more High, 75 to 84 Medium, 65 to 74 Low), sorted by days left.

Sample match (illustrative data from the test fixtures, not a real filing):

{
  "recordType": "match",
  "watchedMark": "SHREE GANESH",
  "watchedClasses": [30],
  "reference": "Client-17",
  "journalMark": "SRI GANESH",
  "markType": "WORD",
  "score": 95,
  "scoreBreakdown": {"visual": 76, "phonetic": 100, "token": 100, "containment": 95, "classFactor": 1.0},
  "reasons": ["phonetic-equal", "indic-fold-equal", "contains-watched", "token-overlap", "same-class"],
  "tmClass": 30,
  "classRelation": "same",
  "applicationNumber": "6123456",
  "filingDate": "2024-03-12",
  "applicantName": "SRI GANESH FOODS PRIVATE LIMITED",
  "applicantCity": "PUNE, MAHARASHTRA",
  "agentName": null,
  "usedSince": "PROPOSED",
  "journalNo": 2283,
  "journalDate": "2026-10-19",
  "oppositionDeadline": "2027-02-19",
  "daysLeft": 118,
  "expired": false,
  "pdfPage": 2,
  "disclaimer": "Screening signal, not legal advice."
}

If a Journal is older than four months, its matches are still delivered (you asked for them) with expired: true, and they are listed last in the report. Applicant data is limited to the name and the city and state; the street address is never stored.

How scoring works

Each pair of marks gets four scores out of 100 and the strongest combination counts: visual (edit distance and Jaro-Winkler on the spelling), phonetic (Indian spelling folding, Double Metaphone, consonant skeleton and Soundex), token (shared words in any order) and containment (your mark appears in the other mark as a whole word or as a prefix or suffix with at least 3 extra letters). Very short marks need to be almost identical. The score is multiplied by a class factor: 1.0 for the same class, 0.95 for a related class, 0.9 for another class when the class scope is "all". When the first sound differs (for example APPLE and MAPLE) the visual and phonetic terms lose 10 points. The threshold is compared with the unrounded score.

Indian spelling folding, applied word by word in this order:

Rule	Example (folds to the same form)
SHREE, SHRI, SREE become SRI	SHREE ≈ SRI
QU becomes KW, PH becomes F, CK becomes K	QUALITY ≈ KWALITY
Aspirates KH, GH, JH, DH, BH lose the H	KHUSHI ≈ KUSHI
SH becomes S	SHAKTI ≈ SAKTI
W becomes V	VISHWAS ≈ VISWAS
Z becomes J	ZAIKA ≈ JAIKA
Long vowels (EE, OO, OU, UU, AA, AI, AY, AU, AW) shorten	AMOOL ≈ AMUL
A final A, AH or H is dropped from words of 4 letters or more	KRISHNAH ≈ KRISHN
Doubled letters collapse	LAKSHMMI ≈ LAKSMI
Number words	RAJ4U ≈ RAJFORYOU

Logo (device) marks without text are not compared and are counted in the run summary.

Pricing

Pay per event, no subscription. The free Apify plan acts as the trial; see the caps below.

Event	When it is charged	Standard (Bronze)	Pro (Silver)	Business (Gold)
Scheduled Journal check (watch-check)	Once per run, after the input is valid	$0.10	$0.09	$0.08
Watched mark checked against one Journal (mark-watched)	Per watched mark and newly checked Journal	$0.02	$0.018	$0.016
New similar mark found (match-found)	Per new match delivered	$0.15	$0.135	$0.12
Journal entry exported (journal-entry-exported)	Per entry in export mode	$0.002	$0.0018	$0.0016

Monthly cost = runs per month x check + watched marks x new Journals per month x mark fee + new matches per month x match fee. Use 22 runs for a weekday schedule, 4.33 for weekly, and about 4.33 new Journals per month (the Journal is weekly).

Example (assumed numbers)	Runs	Marks	New matches	Monthly total
Startup, 3 marks, weekly schedule	4.33	3	1	$0.84
D2C brand, 20 marks, weekday schedule	22	20	4	$4.53
IP firm, 300 marks, weekday schedule	22	300	45	$34.93
Data buyer, export all, weekly (assumes 6,500 entries per Journal)	4.33	0	0	$56.72

The number of matches depends on your marks and settings; the examples only show how the formula works. Runs that find nothing cost only the check. Matches are charged once: a match you were already given is never charged again.

Cost controls: set Max total charge in the run options of Apify (the Actor stops cleanly at the limit and delivers the rest next run), and set Max results per run.

Free Apify plan (no charge to you, limited): up to 3 watched marks, 5 matches per run, backfill of up to 2 Journals, and 100 exported entries per run. When a cap applies, the run still succeeds and the summary says which cap was used.

Notifications

Slack (Integrations tab, "Run succeeded"), message template:

MarkWatch IN run {{resource.status}}.
Open the run: https://console.apify.com/actors/runs/{{resource.id}}
Results and HTML report: https://console.apify.com/storage/key-value/{{resource.defaultKeyValueStoreId}}

Email: add the Gmail integration on "Run succeeded" and attach the dataset. Webhook: add an HTTP webhook integration, or set Webhook URL in the input to receive the OUTPUT JSON. Also add an integration on "Run failed" so you know when a run fails. Webhook and Slack problems never fail the run.

Legal and compliance

• Public data only. The Actor reads the public Trade Marks Journal published by the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks. Applicants can be individuals; the Journal is a statutory public notice. The Actor stores only the applicant name and the city and state, never the street address, and has no search-by-person feature.
• robots.txt and politeness. It checks robots.txt before fetching, never overrides a disallow rule, sends at most one request per second to the Journal site, identifies itself in the User-Agent, and never logs in, solves CAPTCHAs or touches paywalls. On 24 October 2026 the Journal site answered 404 for /robots.txt, which means it publishes no rules; the Actor checks again in every run.
• Your data. Your watch-list and results stay in your Apify account. The state record lives in the named key-value store leons-markwatch-state in your account (history is pruned after 400 days). Delete the store to remove it.
• Individual applicants. Applicants can be natural persons. Results and exports contain the applicant name, city and state (and the agent name when printed); export mode returns every entry of a Journal, so it can produce a bulk table of applicant names. Use the data only for trademark watching and clearance, handle it according to the data-protection law that applies to you, and do not build person-search or profiling products on it. The Actor has no search-by-person feature and never stores street addresses.
• Terms of the Journal site not verified. On 30 October 2026 the terms, copyright and hyperlinking pages linked from the Journal site (www.ipindia.gov.in/Home/Termsconditions, /Home/copyright, /Home/hyperlinkingpolicy) could not be read by an automated check because the web certificate of that host did not match its name, so the reuse conditions of the Journal could not be confirmed. The Journal is a statutory public notice and the site publishes no robots.txt rules, but you should read those pages yourself in a browser before republishing Journal data or building a product on it. The shared Journal cache is not active.
• Independent tool. MarkWatch IN is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks or IP India. Data from the public Journal; verify with the original Journal.
• Screening signal, not legal advice. Always check the official Journal before acting. Device (logo) marks are not compared. Source: Trade Marks Journal, Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks.
• Privacy policy: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/leons0016/ADApps/main/privacy/P1-MarkWatchIN.txt

FAQ

How soon after publication do I see a new Journal? A scheduled run checks the official archive and processes a Journal as soon as it is listed there. The Journal is published weekly; schedule the task on weekdays so a late upload is caught.

What exactly is the opposition deadline? The Journal date plus four months (Trade Marks Act 1999, section 21), shown as oppositionDeadline and daysLeft. Treat it as a screening aid and confirm with your attorney.

Does it compare logos? No. Only marks with text are compared. Logo marks are counted as skipped in the run summary.

Why did a similar mark not match? Try Broad sensitivity, class scope "all", or fewer ignored words. The score breakdown on each match shows which rule fired.

Will I be charged twice for the same match? No. A delivered match is recorded in your state store after it is pushed and charged. If a spending limit stops a run, the matches not yet delivered stay new and arrive in the next run.

What happens if the Journal site is down? The run still succeeds, lists IPINDIA_INDEX_UNREACHABLE in the summary and charges only the check. A Journal with a failed PDF part is not marked as checked and is retried next run.

What is the shared cache? The publisher parses each new Journal once into a store that holds public Journal data only. If the cache is missing or invalid, the Actor parses the official PDFs itself, which is slower.

Can I re-export a Journal? Export mode remembers what it has delivered for a state key. Use another state key to export the same Journal again.

How do I stop all charges? Disable or delete the schedule. Optionally delete the task and the state store.

Support and changelog

Questions and bug reports: use the Issues tab of this Actor or write to atulhritik@hotmail.com. See the Changelog for versions.

Third-party licences and attributions: see docs/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt in the Actor source.