Term sheets ask for an IP schedule. Without one, the round slows. Here is the four-filing stack every Indian startup should hold by the time the first SaaS or PMF metric matters.
Most Indian startups treat intellectual property as a Series A problem. By Series A it is a Series A bill — back-dating founder IP assignments, racing to file a trademark a competitor already pre-empted, paying litigation rates to recover a domain name that should have cost ₹4,500 to file as a mark.
The cheapest IP stack in the lifecycle is the one filed in the first 90 days. DPIIT-recognised startups pay 50% government fees across trademark and patent. Most qualify. Most do not apply. This page is the four-filing default — what to file, in what order, and which IPForte service does what.
Three filings cover most of the IP risk on day one. Each is a standalone service and each links to a deeper walkthrough.
Every term sheet has an IP schedule. Investor counsel will ask four questions: who owns the brand, who owns the code, who owns the inventions, and is the documentation enforceable. Each question maps to a filing.
Investor counsel often catches a missing founder assignment before the founders do. IPForte’s contract drafting stack includes the founder IP assignment, employee assignment, and the consultant IP clause that closes the third source of leaks.
A DPIIT-recognised startup pays ₹4,500 per class for trademarks instead of ₹9,000 — a 50% discount baked into the Trade Marks Rules, 2017. The same recognition gives an 80% discount on patent fees under the Patent (Amendment) Rules, 2016.
Recognition is free, online and typically takes 7-14 days at startupindia.gov.in. Eligibility runs for 10 years from incorporation. If your filing agent is quoting full fees, ask whether they checked DPIIT status before filing.
A Bengaluru SaaS startup at seed stage filed across two classes through an unrecognised agent at ₹9,000 per class — total ₹18,000 in government fees. The same filing post-DPIIT recognition would have cost ₹9,000. The recognition itself takes longer to do than to spell out.
The sequence matters because filings interlock.
An IP-clean startup walks into diligence with: trademark registration certificates (or pending applications with TM numbers), copyright registration receipts, executed founder and employee IP assignments, a patent filing receipt if applicable, and a one-page IP register. IPForte’s IP audit compiles this register before you go into the data room — not after diligence flags it.
Closing a round in the next 6 months? Get an IP audit done first — it is faster than answering diligence with gaps.
WhatsApp our team →At minimum: trademark for the brand and logo, copyright registration of proprietary code, founder and employee IP assignment agreements, and a provisional patent if the startup has genuinely novel technology. Investor counsel will request all four in the IP schedule.
50%. The trademark fee drops from ₹9,000 to ₹4,500 per class for DPIIT-recognised startups, individuals and MSMEs under the Trade Marks Rules, 2017. The same recognition gives an 80% discount on patent fees.
By default, the founder personally owns it. The right has to be assigned to the company in writing — usually through a founder IP assignment agreement signed at or just after incorporation. Without this assignment, the company does not own its own code or brand.
Most startups need a trademark and a copyright. A patent is only worth filing when there is a genuine technical novelty that is non-obvious — typically deep tech, biotech, hardware or original algorithms. Filing a patent on a routine feature wastes both fee and time, and is often rejected at examination.