By Palak Devpura
ZARA is one of the most recognizable fashion brands in the world. Owned by Spain’s Inditex group, it runs over 6,400 stores across 95 markets, sells online in 215 countries, and belongs to a portfolio that crossed 20 billion euros in a single pandemic year. In India, ZARA has been in supply chains since the late 1980s, opened its first store in 2010, and today runs 21 stores that make the name a byword for high-street fashion nationwide.
ZORA is nobody’s idea of a rival. It is the mark of a fabric trader running a modest shop in Sadar Bazar, Delhi. He adopted ZORA in 2016 for polyester lining fabric used inside bags, and registered it in Class 24 in 2019. His customers are bag manufacturers, not shoppers. His storefront is a wholesale roll counter, not a boutique.
So why did a Spanish fashion behemoth spend years litigating a wholesaler most of its customers will never encounter? Because the strongest global brands understand what founders often learn too late: a brand is not what you sell today. It is what your name is allowed to mean tomorrow. Every unopposed lookalike chips at the boundary of that meaning. The Trade Marks Act, 1999 recognizes this: a well-known mark is entitled to protection even against dissimilar goods, precisely so its distinctiveness cannot be diluted by drift.
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On July 6, the Delhi High Court, through Justice Jyoti Singh, ruled in ZARA’s favor. The Registrar had dismissed the opposition, holding that ZA-RA and ZO-RA sounded different. The High Court disagreed. Both marks share four letters, both begin with Z, both end with RA. Under the anti-dissection rule, marks must be compared as a whole — not carved into syllables. To an ordinary buyer with imperfect memory, ZARA and ZORA ring nearly alike. The Court also clarified that a mark need not be a formally declared well-known mark to invoke the wider protection of Section 11(2). Substantial reputation is enough. ZORA’s registration was cancelled.
What founders should take from this
Early-stage founders often assume that a global giant will never notice a small local brand. The ZARA judgment retires that belief. Sophisticated brand owners audit the register continuously; when a lookalike surfaces, they file opposition. The cost of one such fight is trivial compared to watching a brand’s distinctiveness dilute across dozens of unchallenged registrations.
At Spinach Laws, this is the earliest conversation we have with founders. Before a company is incorporated, we run a full clearance across relevant trademark classes, cited and applied marks on the Registry, common-law usage, domains and phonetic conflicts — not just direct hits. We then structure the filing across the classes the business will grow into, not only the one it launches in. It is the least glamorous piece of legal work in a startup’s life, and quietly the one that compounds the most value.
A brand name is not decoration. It is the asset the enterprise sits on. ZARA understood that in 1975. Every founder should understand it before they file for incorporation.
(Palak Devpura is co-founder of Spinach Laws, a startup-focused legal services firm advising founders on incorporation, brand protection and cross-border transactions. This column is part of the ongoing Spinach Laws × The American Bazaar series on law for founders.)