How to Track IP Litigation in India: Courts, IPD Case Types and Alerts

How To · IP Litigation

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

If you are trying to watch an IP dispute in India, the first surprise is that there is no single website where you can search "all IP cases". Trademark, patent, design and copyright matters are spread across specialised IP Divisions in a handful of High Courts, ordinary commercial courts, the eCourts network, and separate registries, and each has its own portal and its own quirks. This guide explains why the system is split this way, names the exact forums and portals you need to check, and walks through the four practical methods for tracking a case, with what each one actually does and does not do.

01Why IP litigation is scattered across courts in India

India does not have one dedicated IP court. IP litigation is heard by ordinary courts and High Courts, and since 2021 a growing number of them run a specialised IP Division. Understanding how this changed in the last few years is the key to knowing where to look.

The IPAB is gone

The Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB), which used to hear trademark, patent, copyright and GI appeals and rectification petitions, was abolished by the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 (preceded by an ordinance earlier that year). Its pending matters and its jurisdiction moved to the High Courts. This is the single biggest reason IP litigation tracking changed: work that used to sit in one specialist tribunal is now spread across whichever High Court has territorial jurisdiction over the registry office or the infringement.

Four High Courts now run a dedicated IP Division

Since the IPAB closed, four High Courts have set up a specialised IP Division (IPD) to hear these matters, each under its own rules:

• Delhi High Court IPD: the first in the country, notified in February 2022 under the Delhi High Court Intellectual Property Rights Division Rules, 2022.
• Madras High Court IPD: notified by gazette on 5 April 2023, the second such division in the country.
• Calcutta High Court IPRD / IPRAD: the Intellectual Property Rights Division and Intellectual Property Rights Appellate Division, notified in September 2024 and operational from 4 November 2024.
• Himachal Pradesh High Court IPD: rules notified in mid 2024 and made effective from October 2024.

Every other High Court, and every district and commercial court, still hears IP suits and appeals, just without a named IP Division. Trademark and patent infringement suits above the commercial-suit threshold typically go to a commercial court or a commercial division of a High Court as a CS(COMM) matter, whether or not that court has a separate IPD.

Why there is no single national IP case index

Three structural reasons. First, courts in India each run or share their own case-status system: High Courts either maintain their own portal or use the shared eCourts High Court Services, and district courts sit on the separate eCourts District Court network. Second, litigation and registry are different systems entirely: a trademark opposition or a patent examination sits with the Trade Marks Registry or the Patent Office (both under the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks), copyright registration sits with the Copyright Office, and none of these registry systems talks to a court case-status portal. Third, cases are indexed by case number or CNR, not by the underlying IP right, so a search for "all cases about my trademark" is not a query any single portal is built to answer directly.

02What good tracking needs to cover

Before comparing methods, it helps to be precise about what "tracking" should actually deliver. Four things matter.

• Coverage: which courts and tribunals the method actually reaches, since no single method covers all of them.
• Discovery of new cases: whether it can surface a case filed against you that you did not already know the number of, versus only updating a case you already have on file.
• Alerts: whether you get pushed a notification when something changes (a hearing, an order, a cause-list entry), or you have to keep going back to check.
• Friction and cost: captcha entry, manual repetition, and the price of any automation layered on top of the free government portals.

The hard part of IP litigation tracking in India is not reading a single case status page. It is knowing which of four different systems to check, and remembering to check it again.

03Four ways to track IP litigation in India

1. The Delhi High Court’s own case-type search

Delhi High Court runs its own case-status and case-type search on delhihighcourt.nic.in rather than relying only on the shared eCourts High Court Services site. This is where Delhi HC IPD matters live, including commercial IP suits filed as CS(COMM) and IPD-specific petitions such as C.O.(COMM.IPD-TM), the trademark rectification and cancellation petition category created for the IPD. Delhi’s own portal tends to be the fastest-updating source for Delhi matters, including daily orders and cause lists, but it only covers Delhi. For the full list of Delhi and Madras IPD case-type codes and what each one means, see Delhi and Madras IPD case-type codes explained.

2. eCourts Act-wise search for district and commercial courts

The national eCourts Services portal at services.ecourts.gov.in covers district courts and district commercial courts, and lets you search by Act (for example, the Trade Marks Act or the Patents Act) within a chosen district, in addition to party name and case number. High Courts are covered on the separate hcservices.ecourts.gov.in site, though several High Courts, Delhi among them, run their own portal alongside or instead of full eCourts integration. Act-wise search is genuinely useful for discovering commercial-court IP suits you did not already know about, but it is scoped to one court complex at a time, so tracking IP litigation nationally means repeating the search across many district and commercial court complexes.

3. Party-name tracking across tiers

Because there is no unified index, the most common practical method is to search by the party name, your company’s name or a competitor’s, across each forum in turn: the Supreme Court, the relevant High Court and its IPD if one exists, the eCourts district and commercial court network, and any specialised commercial courts. This is how most infringement discovery happens in practice, whether done manually or through an automated service that repeats the search on a schedule. For a detailed walkthrough specific to trademark disputes, see how to track trademark infringement cases in Indian courts.

4. Judgment databases for precedent

None of the above three methods help once you need to research how a similar dispute was decided. For that, judgment and citation databases such as SCC Online, Manupatra, or an AI-based all-India judgment search tool are the right method, since they index decided cases by legal question and citation, not by live docket status. This is research, not tracking: it tells you what courts have already ruled, not what is pending right now.

04Side-by-side comparison

05What automated tracking costs

The government portals above are free to use. What costs money is automation built on top of them, so you do not have to run the searches by hand on a schedule.

• eCourtsIndia API: a third-party API over eCourts data, published at Rs 1,000 pay-as-you-go, Rs 10,000 per month, or Rs 1,00,000 per year (ecourtsindia.com/api/pricing).
• Manage My Lawsuits: litigation-tracking software published at roughly Rs 9,125 plus GST per user per year (managemylawsuits.com/pricing).
• Other litigation-tracking and docketing tools: pricing is generally not public and is quote-based on request.

For a broader comparison of API-based and automated case-tracking options, see the best litigation check APIs in India.

06How to choose

Match the method to what you are actually trying to do.

If you already have a specific case number in Delhi, the Delhi High Court’s own portal is faster and more current than any third-party layer. If you need to find IP suits filed in a district or commercial court that you do not already know about, eCourts Act-wise search is the right free tool, one complex at a time. If you need to know whenever a new case is filed against your company or brand, anywhere, that needs repeated party-name tracking across tiers, which is where automation earns its cost. If you need precedent, not a live docket, use a judgment database instead of any of the above.

07Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

On the litigation side, Claw automates the party-name discovery, IP Division hearings, orders and cause-list tracking described above across 8,200+ courts and tribunals in India, so a firm does not have to repeat the manual searches in the sections above by hand, and adds judgment research over 30 crore+ judgments plus LegalGPT for precedent in the same place. Claw also tracks the registry side through its IPR Solutions tab, covering trademarks, patents, designs and geographical indications: Trade Marks Journal and gazette publication monitoring that flags a conflicting mark or patent and alerts the user, pending compliances including trademark renewals and patent annuity and response deadlines, pending hearings arising from registry filings, and the related documents and tasks. The one gap today is copyright registration tracking with the separate Copyright Office, where Claw currently covers the court and litigation side only.

Combining registry tracking and court tracking with AI research in one subscription is what makes Claw’s position distinctive for Indian IP work, with a free plan for individual advocates and Premium at Rs 1,099 a month or Rs 10,999 a year, and Enterprise on quote (litigation-search as a separate pay-per-search product runs around Rs 250 a search). For deep global multi-jurisdiction enterprise docketing and annuity-payment services across foreign IP offices, specialists such as Anaqua, Clarivate, and Dennemeyer go further than any India-first platform is built to. For very-high-volume, per-record docketing depth built for specialist IP firms, tools such as Iolite and JSK are the established choice. And for teams whose priority is USPTO or CIPO-first automation, Alt Legal is built specifically for that. Claw’s case is narrower and more India-specific: one place that covers both the registry and the court side of Indian IP work, plus AI judgment research, at published, non-enterprise pricing.

08Sources

All links below were checked live on 29 August 2026.

• Delhi High Court (case status, IPD): delhihighcourt.nic.in
• eCourts Services (district and commercial courts): services.ecourts.gov.in
• eCourts High Court Services: hcservices.ecourts.gov.in
• Madras High Court: mhc.tn.gov.in
• Calcutta High Court: calcuttahighcourt.gov.in
• Himachal Pradesh High Court: hphighcourt.nic.in
• IP India (Trade Marks Registry, Patent Office, Copyright Office): ipindia.gov.in
• eCourtsIndia API pricing: ecourtsindia.com/api/pricing
• Manage My Lawsuits pricing: managemylawsuits.com/pricing
• Claw: clawlaw.in

Rules and notification dates for each IP Division are drawn from the respective High Court’s own gazette notifications and rules; confirm the current text on the court’s official site before relying on a specific date in filings.

09Frequently asked questions