Oxford University Press came to India in 1912, and learned of the existence of the Oxford Bookstores shortly after they were set up in 1919. They had a brief legal tussle over the use of the telegraphic address 'Oxonian', but in general tolerated and even encouraged the firm, giving them special terms for OUP and Clarendon Press titles. ‘An enterprising firm, certainly good at display,’ Humphrey Sumner Milford, Publisher to the University, commented to Sir Maurice Gwyer.

OUP had taken legal advice and been told that the geographical identifier ‘Oxford’ carried no protection unless teamed with ‘University’ or ‘Press’; and if any two words of the name were used they could ‘jump in with both feet’, as Milford said, and prosecute for trademark violation.^{[citation needed]} The Press had been able to stifle the activities of the University of Oxford, Tennessee, without too much trouble, but marmalade, sausages and shoes could all call themselves ‘Oxford’ with impunity. Milford encouraged Oxford Bookstores because he felt their ‘enterprise’ deserved it, and since they were not publishers their operations actually helped OUP, and the confusion over who owned the Oxford Bookstores may have acted in OUP's advantage.^{[citation needed]}

The Oxford Bookstore was a landmark in Calcutta during the days of the Raj, along with Whiteaway Laidlaw's famous departmental store.^{[citation needed]} Like most bookshops of the time, the store also stocked fancy leather goods, toys, perfume, albums, photo frames, indoor games, playing cards and silver and electroplated goods. It features in the memoirs of many eminent British and Indian figures of the twentieth century, and has always played a part in the city's life. In the 1970s, during the Naxalite rising, it was used as a message drop-off point by activists, who would slip notes into particular books for other members of their group to find.^{[citation needed]}

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