Nepal has no collective mark and no certification mark as filing categories. The Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965 never uses either term. What a group or a certifying body can have here is an ordinary trade mark, owned by one legal person, with others permitted to use it in writing.
Key takeaways
- The word "collective" appears zero times in the Act.
- "Certification" appears once, as a fee line in Schedule 3, not as a kind of mark.
- Sec. 2(c) describes a trade mark used by "any firm, company or individual" — one applicant.
- There is no collective-mark form, no certification-mark form and no rulebook to file.
- Sec. 21D is the only machinery for a second user: written approval, recorded by joint application.
- Nepal joined the Paris Convention in 2001, and its Art. 7bis speaks directly to collective marks.
- The practical route is one owner, one registration, and a written agreement the group drafts itself.
What is a collective mark in the countries that have one?
A collective mark is owned by an association and used by its members, so the mark says "this maker belongs to our body" rather than naming a single trader.
The association rarely sells the goods itself. It admits members, publishes the conditions, and polices who may put the mark on a label.
What is a certification mark in the countries that have one?
A certification mark says something different: the goods meet a stated standard. Origin, material, method of manufacture or quality are the usual subjects.
Its owner is a certifying body that normally must not trade in the certified goods, because a referee who also plays cannot be trusted.
In systems that recognise it, the owner files a set of rules alongside the mark, and those rules become public and binding.
Does Nepal have either of them?
No. Neither exists as something you can file at the Department of Industry, because the governing statute does not create them.
That is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of what words are printed in the Act, and the words are simply not there.
How can you check that for yourself?
Read the official English text of the Act, which the Nepal Law Commission publishes and WIPO Lex also carries in full.
Search it for "collective" and you will find nothing at all. Search it for "certification" and you will find a single hit, inside the Schedule 3 fee table, reading "Certification except transfer".
That line sits between an amendment fee and a fee for registration details, so it prices a certified copy of a record. It does not create a mark.
What does the Act's definition actually say?
Under Sec. 2(c) a trade mark means a word, symbol or picture, "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 the subject of that sentence carefully. The mark is used by one firm, one company or one individual, to mark out its own goods from everybody else's.
A collective mark inverts that idea, because its whole point is a class of users rather than a single trader. The definition simply does not reach it.
Does the Act mention licensing, quality or standards anywhere?
It does not. The words "licence", "license", "quality", "standard", "association" and "members" appear nowhere in the Act's text.
That absence is the real problem. No statutory vocabulary for shared use exists, so nothing in the law describes what your scheme is or how it should behave.
So what is Sec. 21D, and why does it matter?
It is the nearest thing the Act has to a licence. Sec. 21D(1) lets the owner of a patent, design or trade mark transfer ownership, or "provide approval in writing for its use".
Sec. 21D(2) then requires both parties to file a joint application at the Department with the prescribed fee, stating the facts.
Under Sec. 21D(5), where approval for use is granted, the Department records it and issues a note to the person receiving the approval.
That gives an approved user something official to hold. It does not make the group a co-owner, nor turn the registration into a collective one.
Why does the wording of Sec. 16 matter here?
Sec. 16(1) says a person acquires title to the trade mark of their business on registration at the Department under Sec. 18, which is the ordinary first-to-file rule.
Sec. 16(2) then forbids anyone to copy or use another's registered mark without a transfer of ownership or written permission under Sec. 21D, and that cross-reference is the hook a shared scheme hangs on.
So the Act does contemplate a second user. It never imagines a whole class of them governed by published rules.
How do the systems compare?
| Question | Collective mark elsewhere | Certification mark elsewhere | Nepal, 1965 Act |
|---|---|---|---|
| Is it a filing category? | Yes, a separate application | Yes, a separate application | No such category exists. |
| Who owns it? | The association | An independent certifier | One firm, company or individual. |
| Who may use it? | Members in good standing | Anyone who meets the standard | Anyone the owner approves in writing. |
| Are the rules filed publicly? | Usually yes | Usually yes | No. The group keeps them privately. |
| Where is the authority? | The national trade mark statute | The national trade mark statute | Sec. 21D, plus your own contract. |
What do India and the European Union have that Nepal does not?
India and the European Union both recognise collective marks and certification marks as registrations in their own right, with their own rules about who may own one and who may use it.
Check the detail with the office concerned, because those regimes differ from each other as well as from Nepal. The point here is only that Nepal has neither.
Readers meet those regimes first, in an Indian article or a European label, and reasonably assume Nepal works the same way. It does not.
Is Nepal obliged to offer a collective mark?
There is a real question here, and it belongs with an advocate rather than with us. Nepal joined the Paris Convention on 22 June 2001.
Paris Art. 7bis(1) says member countries "undertake to accept for filing and to protect collective marks belonging to associations", even where the association has no commercial establishment.
Art. 7bis(2) then leaves each country to judge the conditions of protection, which is wide latitude, and Nepal's law currently supplies no conditions at all.
Whether an ordinary registration plus Sec. 21D discharges that undertaking is a legal question. Ask a practising advocate before relying on either answer.
Who should own the registration?
One legal person, chosen before anything is designed. A cooperative, an industry association, a company or a named individual can each hold a mark.
Avoid putting it in a single member's personal name for convenience. That member can later refuse the others, and the register backs them.
If you are unsure whether your body can hold property in its own name, settle that with your registering authority first. It decides who signs the form.
How does a group file today?
- Fix the owner. Decide which body holds the registration and who signs for it.
- Write the rules. Membership, standard, inspection and consequences, before a designer is hired.
- Search the register. Somebody may already hold your name; start with our conflict checker.
- Pick the classes.Sec. 18A(2) requires a separate application for each category, so use the NICE class finder early.
- File the application. The prescribed form with four specimens of the mark, under Sec. 17(1).
- Answer the examiner. Expect questions where the mark is descriptive or close to an earlier one.
- Record each user. A joint application under Sec. 21D for every approved member or licensee.
What has to be in writing, since the Act supplies none of it?
Everything a collective or certification regime would normally publish for you. The scheme is only as good as the document your group drafts.
That document is a contract, not a filing, so it lives or dies on ordinary contract drafting. Have a lawyer write it rather than adapting a template from another country.
Keep it separate from the application papers themselves. Our guide to the documents a Nepali filing needs covers those, including the power of attorney an agent files on your behalf.
What happens when a member leaves or breaks the rules?
Your agreement decides, and borrowed templates fail here. Set out how approval ends, how fast stock must be relabelled, and who pays for it.
Because the approval was recorded at the Department, plan for the paperwork of withdrawing it as well as the commercial side.
Enforcement against an outsider is a different matter. Sec. 19 backs a misuse of a registered mark with a fine and confiscation of the goods involved, and our enforcement team handles those.
How long does the registration last?
Seven years from registration under Sec. 18D, and the renewal term for a trade mark is another seven years, repeatable any number of times under Sec. 23B(3).
Sec. 23B(1) puts renewal within 35 days of expiry, with a six-month late window on payment of a fine, after which the registration is cancelled automatically.
Keep the registration certificate and the Sec. 21D notes together, because a committee that changes every two years loses paperwork faster than it loses deadlines.
Our renewal calculator works out the dates, and our renewal service keeps them from slipping while a committee changes hands.
Is there a deadline for using the mark?
Yes, and it catches schemes that file early and launch late. Sec. 18C says a registered mark not brought into use within one year of registration is cancelled after inquiry by the Department.
A group that registers a name and then spends two years agreeing its standard is exposed to that. File when the scheme is nearly ready, not years ahead of it.
Where can the group watch for copies?
Registered trade marks are published under Sec. 21A(1), and a published trade mark can be opposed within a 90-day opposition window; rely on the deadline the Department of Industry states and act before the last day.
Those notices appear in the Industrial Property Bulletin, which our trademark database indexes, and the owner search shows what a rival group holds.
Reading each new issue is the part a committee forgets, so decide who does it now. Our search and clearance service can check a name before you commit.
Common mistakes
- Asking the Department for a collective-mark form. There is not one to give you.
- Copying Indian wording. India's chapters on these marks have no Nepali counterpart.
- Registering in a member's own name. The register will back that member, not the group.
- Filing one application for everything. Sec. 18A(2) wants one per category of goods.
- Leaving the standard vague. "High quality" cannot be inspected or enforced.
- Skipping the Sec. 21D record. An undocumented user is hard to remove later.
A worked example
This is an illustration, not a real case. Fourteen honey producers in one district want a shared name and a common jar label.
They register their cooperative, file the name and device in the relevant goods class, and sign a members' agreement covering hive location, moisture content and labelling.
Each producer then goes on the register as an approved user by joint application, so the cooperative can prove who was entitled to the name in any given season.
Will a new law change this?
A consolidating industrial property bill has been reported for years and is widely expected to add these categories. We will not describe its provisions, because no enacted text exists.
Until something is passed and published, the 1965 Act is the law in force, and your group has to work with what it says today.
In short
Nepal offers one kind of trade mark, and a group scheme is built on top of it rather than instead of it.
Pick the owner, write the agreement, file the mark, then record every approved user so the register matches reality.
Check what already exists on our register search, and let our filing team take the application from there.
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If you run a cooperative, an association or a standards body and need the ownership and approval structure drafted properly, tell us who the members are and what the mark has to promise.
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