INDIA'S FIRST SMELL TRADEMARK: WHAT THE SUMITOMO ROSE FRAGRANCE ORDER MEANS FOR COPYRIGHT LAW

Perfume houses can trademark a bottle's name, packaging, and advertising, but not the scent itself. The reasoning has always been practical: no one could pin a smell down precisely enough for a court. That changed in November 2025, when the Trade Marks Registry approved India's first olfactory trademark, the rose fragrance Sumitomo Rubber Industries has applied to its tyres since the 1990s , based on a seven-dimensional model that translated the smell into data. It is a trademark decision, not a copyright one, but it confronts the old excuse that smell cannot be precisely represented.