Who really owns the Sensex?

PUNE: It is a wordy duel of sorts in which the ownership of the term Sensex, which sends the pulse of countless shareholders racing, is being debated at legal forums.
    
Challenging the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), which has applied to register Sensex as its trademark, Deepak Mohoni, a stock market analyst here, has filed a plea with the Trademark registry claiming that the word had been coined by him to denote the BSE sensitive index in his newspaper columns before BSE started using it.
    
Apart from filing his application with Trademark registry, Mohoni has also moved a legal suit in Pune district court under Section 134 of Trade Market to stake his claim in respect of coining of the word.
    
According to Mohoni, he used the word Sensex first in 1989 in a newspaper column to Nickname a long, clumsy phrase- BSE SENSITIVE INDEX.
    
He claims that BSE started using it much later from 1995 in its publications.
    
"I decided to file my application before Trademark registry when I came to know that BSE was moving to register SENSEX as it trademark," Mohoni said.
    
He has now been served a notice by BSE through its lawyers contending that the word was exclusively associated with Bombay Stock Exchange services and could not be registered as trademark by any other party.
    
Ranjan Nehru, the lawyer for Mohoni, has submitted in his plea that his client enjoyed an exclusive right over the word SENSEX, the term which was convenient, attractive and innovative.