A GI protects the craft; it does not protect your house brand. If you sell to a US or EU buyer under your own name, that name is the asset — file it here, then file it there.
Delhi is the front office of India's handicraft export trade. The buyers walk the Sundar Nagar showrooms and the Dilli Haat ecosystem, the paperwork clears through the export houses of the capital, and the product flows in from Moradabad brass, Firozabad glass, Panipat furnishings and Bhadohi carpets. What the overseas buyer actually contracts with, however, is a brand — your house name on the label, the catalogue and the container. That brand is the one asset most export houses never register, and it is the one a distributor abroad can quietly grab.
There is a persistent confusion to clear first: a Geographical Indication and a trademark are different instruments. A GI is a collective right in a place-based craft — it belongs to a community of producers, not to you. Your house brand is a private, individual trademark that you own outright. You can be a licensed user of a GI and own a separate house mark; the two coexist. Home-décor brands sit mainly in Class 20 (furniture), Class 21 (housewares, decorative objects), Class 27 (rugs, floor coverings) and Class 35 (export trading, retail). Delhi exporters file from Delhi under the Dwarka registry, online, and then extend abroad. Start with a search and file through Form TM-A.
Three filings cover most of the IP risk on day one. Each is a standalone service and each links to a deeper walkthrough.
Class 20 covers furniture, mirrors, picture frames and goods of wood, cane, wicker and bone. Class 21 is housewares and small décor — vases, planters, candle holders, glass and ceramic objects. Class 27 is rugs, dhurries and floor coverings, the heart of the Bhadohi–Panipat carpet trade. And Class 35 covers the export trading, wholesale and retail function itself, which matters when you sell under your name across categories. Because most export houses ship across several of these categories, the right filing is usually multi-class — cost it on the trademark cost calculator and confirm the categories on the class finder before filing.
Textile-heavy furnishing houses overlap with the textile-wholesaler pattern, and apparel-linked export houses working the same buyer network should also read trademark for Delhi garment and apparel exporters.
A practical note on how to file: most export houses launch a single house brand that spans furniture, tabletop and floor coverings, so a multi-class TM-A is the efficient route rather than three separate single-class filings. If you sell only décor accessories, you may need just Class 21 and Class 35; if you are a full furnishing house, all four classes make sense. The trade-off between a name filed as a plain wordmark and a stylised logo — which matters when your identity appears on woven labels, hangtags and export cartons — is set out in logo vs wordmark in Delhi, and a broader mapping of categories for a mixed goods business is in the Delhi class guide.
This is the crux of the sector. A GI tag (say, a registered craft or regional weave) is a collective right: it certifies origin and lets an authorised community of producers use the indication. It is not owned by any one firm and it cannot be assigned to you. Your house brand — the name and logo you put on the label — is a separate, private trademark that you own and can license, sell and enforce on your own terms. The two are complementary: you might legitimately be a registered GI user for the craft while separately owning your house mark. The full explainer is on the GI tag page, and the private-brand side is the ordinary trademark registration route.
Where does it go wrong? Two failure modes. First, treating the GI as if it protects your brand — it does not; if a rival copies your house name, the GI gives you nothing to act on. Second, trying to monopolise a descriptive or geographic term in your trademark, which runs straight into Section 9 absolute grounds. The winning structure is a distinctive, coined house brand (fully yours) sitting on top of a truthful GI/origin claim (shared). If your application does draw a descriptiveness or similarity objection, that is an examination-report reply exercise.
An Indian registration protects you in India. It does nothing in the United States, Germany or the UK — the markets your containers actually land in. A common and painful pattern we see: an export house builds a name with a European distributor over several seasons, then the distributor registers that name in its own country and the exporter is suddenly locked out of its own brand, or worse, sued for using it. The fix is to file where you sell, and the efficient route is the Madrid Protocol — one application, filed on the back of your Indian mark, extending to a basket of destination countries. The Delhi/NCR walkthrough is in Madrid Protocol filing from Delhi NCR.
Sequence matters: your Indian filing is the basis for the Madrid application, so file at home first, then extend within six months to keep priority. Distributor and buyer contracts should also state plainly that the brand is yours and that any local registration by a partner is held in trust for you — a contracts safeguard that has saved many exporters a foreign lawsuit.
An export house's IP is broader than a name. The distinctive shape of a signature planter or a novel furniture silhouette can be protected as a registered design; the catalogue photography, the pattern artwork and the lookbook are protected by copyright; and where a rival lifts your brand and passes off cheaper goods to your buyers, that is a matter for a Journal opposition if it is still an application, and infringement or passing-off litigation once it is in trade. Put a watch on the mark so a lookalike is caught at advertisement rather than after it has reached your buyer's inbox.
The GI belongs to the craft; the house brand belongs to you. Exporters who conflate the two often leave their own name unregistered — and India is first-to-file, so the season you delay is the season an agent or rival files it. Register the private brand, keep the GI claim honest, and extend abroad through Madrid before a distributor does it for you.
Run the sequence like a shipping schedule. Clear the house name with a search and a quick pass on the free search tool. File the house brand in the relevant Class 20/21/27 categories plus Class 35 via TM-A — the government fee is ₹4,500 per class for MSMEs and startups on e-filing, and Udyam-registered exporters should read the Udyam concession guide. Then extend to your top export markets through Madrid, keep the mark under watch, and file renewals on schedule. The wider Delhi context is in the complete 2026 Delhi guide, and MSME wholesalers in the same trade should read trademark filing for Delhi MSME wholesalers.
Selling home-décor under your own name to buyers abroad? Register the house brand in India and extend it through Madrid before a distributor files it first.
WhatsApp our team →Furniture and wooden goods sit in Class 20, housewares and decorative objects in Class 21, and rugs and floor coverings in Class 27. Class 35 covers export trading and retail. The class finder confirms the mix.
An Indian registration only protects you in India. File in your export markets through the Madrid Protocol, which extends your Indian mark to many countries in one application. The Delhi walkthrough is in Madrid filing from Delhi NCR.
This is a common trap. The fix is to file your export markets first through Madrid and to include contract terms stating any local registration by a partner is held in trust for you. If it has already happened, it becomes a cross-border enforcement dispute.