You can register the name in your domain as a trade mark. You cannot register the address. The Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965 does not mention domains, websites or the internet anywhere — so the real question is which part of your web address is a mark at all.
Key takeaways
- "Domain", "internet", "website" and "URL" appear zero times in the Act. It has no domain rule to apply.
- Sec. 2(c) protects a word, symbol or picture used to distinguish goods or services. That is the brand, not the address.
- A domain is a contract with a registrar. A trade mark is a statutory title granted by the Department of Industry.
- Sec. 18C cancels a registered mark not brought into use within one year, which rules out parking names.
- Sec. 21B means a mark registered abroad has no effect in Nepal until it is registered here.
- Winning the mark does not automatically win the domain. The registrar is not bound by the Department.
Does Nepali law know what a domain name is?
No. We counted it across the consolidated Act: domain, internet, website, online and URL each appear zero times. The statute predates the web by three decades and has not been amended to notice it.
So a fight over a web address is not decided by the trade mark Act unless a registered mark is in it. The text sits with the Nepal Law Commission.
So what exactly can you register?
Sec. 2(c) defines a trade mark as a "word, symbol, or picture or a combination thereof to be used by any firm, company or individual in its products or services to distinguish them with the product or services of others".
Read that against a web address. The protectable thing is the word. The prefix and the extension are addressing syntax every site shares, so neither helps distinguish one trader from another.
In practice you file the word on its own, the logo, or both. Filing the full address as written is rarely useful.
It ties the registration to a presentation you may abandon at the first rebrand, and adds nothing an examiner can weigh.
What is the difference between owning the domain and owning the mark?
They come from different places and do different work. One is a renewable service contract; the other is a title the state grants and the state can cancel.
| Question | Domain registration | Trade mark at the Department |
|---|---|---|
| Who grants it | A commercial registrar, under contract | The Department of Industry, under statute |
| What you get | An address that resolves to your site | Title to the sign itself. Sec. 16. |
| Where it works | Anywhere the address is typed | In Nepal, for the classes you filed |
| Who can be stopped | Nobody, on the strength of the domain alone | A later conflicting applicant or user |
| How long it lasts | As long as you keep paying the registrar | Seven years, renewable. Sec. 18D. |
| Lost by not using it | No | Yes, after one year. Sec. 18C. |
Each protects the other's blind spot. A domain stops nobody trading under your name offline.
A registration stops nobody typing your name into a registrar's search box. You need both, and you should not expect either to cover for the other.
Our longer comparison is in do you need both a domain name and a trademark, and the order to do them in is in locking down your domain, handle and mark.
Can the Department refuse a name because it is too generic?
Not on any ground written into the Act. The proviso to Sec. 18(1) lists five reasons to refuse: the mark may hurt the prestige of a person or institution, adversely affect public conduct or morality, undermine the national interest, undermine the reputation of another person's trade mark, or it is already registered to someone else.
Descriptiveness is not on that list, and the word distinctive appears nowhere in the Act. The only textual hook is Sec. 2(c)'s requirement that the mark be used "to distinguish" one trader's goods from another's.
So if an application built on a generic domain is refused, that refusal comes from examination practice rather than a section you can quote. Ask for the reasoning in writing before deciding how to answer it.
The commercial advice is unchanged. A descriptive address is easy to buy and hard to defend, because competitors can use the same words honestly. How startups pick a name that will not get sued works through the trade-off.
Which class does a domain-based brand belong in?
No class exists for domain names. Nepal uses the NICE classification of 45 classes, applied under Sec. 18A(1) by a notification in the Nepal Gazette, and your class follows what you sell through the site rather than the fact that a site exists.
Sec. 18A(2) requires a separate application for each category. A brand that sells its own goods online and also runs the marketplace for others is making two commercial claims, and the Act treats them as two filings.
Sec. 18A(3) then allows the same mark to be registered in another category if it falls there, so the second filing is an extension rather than a new argument. The Department of Industry publishes its own forms and notices. Start with the NICE class finder and check the wording against what you actually invoice for.
Is the .np ending treated differently?
Not by the Act, which says nothing about any extension. A .np address is allocated by the body that administers the country-code registry, under that registry's own rules.
Those rules decide who may hold the address and on what terms. They are not trade mark law, and a trade mark examiner at the Department does not apply them.
So a business can hold an address it has no brand right to, or the reverse. Plan both halves separately.
Will a registration get your domain back?
Not by itself. The Department of Industry registers and cancels marks. It does not administer domains, and nothing in the Act gives it any power over a registrar.
What a registration gives you is standing: a right to assert against the holder, through whatever route that registry provides. The forum and the strength of the claim are separate questions needing advice.
Treat recovery as a negotiation entered with better cards, not something the certificate delivers. The background is in cybersquatting and domain name disputes.
What if the name is already registered to someone else?
Then the fifth ground in the proviso to Sec. 18(1) applies directly: a mark "found to have already been registered in the name of another person" shall not be registered. Buying the matching domain afterwards does not change that.
Where the earlier owner is willing, Sec. 21D allows ownership to be transferred, or written approval for use to be given, on a joint application to the Department with the prescribed fee. That is a negotiation, not an application you can make alone.
Can you file a name you have bought but not launched?
You can file it. Keeping it is the problem. Sec. 18C says that where a registered trade mark "is not brought into use within one year from the date of registration thereof", the Department shall conduct inquiries and cancel the registration.
That clock runs from registration, not filing, and it ends the plan of parking a basket of names for later. The Act does not define use, so keep dated invoices and advertising from the first sale.
What about the ® symbol on your site?
Hold it until the registration certificate exists. Sec. 18B is blunt: "No trade mark may be used as a registered trade mark without registering it at the Department." Sec. 19 backs that with a fine and confiscation of the goods connected with the offence.
A footer carrying ® while the application is pending is exactly the conduct the section describes.
Does a foreign registration cover your .com in Nepal?
No. Sec. 21B states that title to a trade mark registered in a foreign country "shall not be valid in Nepal unless it is registered in Nepal". A global domain does not make a foreign registration global.
Nepal is outside the Madrid System on WIPO's own party list, so no international filing reaches here. A foreign owner files directly, usually through a local representative holding a power of attorney.
Sec. 21C helps: the Department may register a foreign-registered mark without conducting enquiries where the foreign registration certificate is enclosed, and shall extend the facility of the Paris Convention to the holder.
How do you decide what to file?
- Separate the sign from the address. Write the brand without the prefix and the extension. That string is your candidate mark.
- Search it properly. Check the published register for the word, its spellings and sound-alikes, with our trade mark search and the conflict checker.
- Decide word, logo or both. A word mark travels across redesigns; a logo covers the artwork. Many brands need the pair.
- Pick classes by revenue line. List what you invoice for now and next year, and file one application per category.
- Align the names. The domain holder, the company and the applicant should be the same legal person before you file, not after.
- File before you launch loudly. Nepal is first-to-file, so publicity ahead of an application is an invitation.
Where the name is already in use elsewhere, a clearance opinion beats another search: that is what our search and clearance service produces, and trade mark registration takes it from there.
What happens after the Department accepts it?
Accepted marks are published. Sec. 21A(1) requires the Department to publish registered trade marks, together with particulars of renewal or cancellation, for public information — this is the Industrial Property Bulletin. Sec. 21A(2) then gives "any one who has any objection" a period in which to complain.
Be careful with its length. The Act's words give 35 days from publication, while the opposition period worked to for trade marks in local practice is 90 days. The two do not match, so confirm your own date with the Department rather than assuming the longer one.
After registration, Sec. 18D gives seven years and Sec. 23B allows renewal within 35 days of expiry, with a six-month late window on payment of a fine, after which the registration is cancelled automatically. A trade mark may be renewed any number of times.
What does this look like in practice?
Imagine a Lalitpur grocery service trading from himalbasket.com.np. It files HIMALBASKET as a word mark in its retail class, and the logo separately. A competitor opening a shop called Himal Basket in Butwal answers to the registration, not to the domain. A squatter who buys himalbasket.com does not, at least not through the Department. This is an illustration, not a real case, but it is the ordinary shape of the problem.
Common mistakes
- Filing the full address, prefix and extension included, and tying the registration to a presentation you will change.
- Choosing a class from the extension. A .com tells the examiner nothing about what you sell.
- Buying every domain variant and calling it brand protection. Check the register first in has this brand name already been taken.
- Registering the domain in a founder's name and the mark in the company's, then discovering the mismatch during due diligence.
- Assuming the company name at the Office of the Company Registrar does the work — see trade mark against trade name and company name.
- Letting the registration sit unused past its first anniversary, which Sec. 18C treats as a reason to cancel.
In short
Register the word, not the address. The Act has no concept of a domain, so everything useful follows from treating the distinctive part of your address as an ordinary trade mark: right classes, in use inside the first year, renewed on time — and the domain fight kept as a separate conversation.
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If your whole business runs through one address, the name behind it is worth more than the renewal fee you pay a registrar. Talk to the IP Sewa team about which classes your site actually needs.
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