DoI Notices and Circulars: Why They Matter

A notice on the Department of Industry website can change the paperwork at the counter tomorrow. It cannot change a term, a deadline or a ground of refusal. Knowing which is which is the whole skill, because the two look identical on the page.

Key takeaways

• The word "circular" appears zero times in the Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965.
• The only instrument the Act names is a notification in the Nepal Gazette — used for classification, fees and which department acts.
• Sec. 21A(1) is the Bulletin's legal basis: the Department publishes registered marks and designs "for the information of the public".
• A published trade mark can be opposed within 90 days of its publication in the Bulletin; rely on the date the Department states and act before the last day.
• The Act's only use of "notice" is Sec. 5(2) — a private letter to a patent applicant, not a public circular.
• There is no public online status tracker, so the published notices are most of what you can see from outside.

What does the Act actually authorise the Department to publish?

Less than most people assume. Reading the consolidated text, publication appears in exactly three shapes, and only one of them is routine.

Sec. 21A(1) requires the Department to publish registered designs and trade marks, with particulars of their renewal or cancellation. Sec. 7A(1) sends registered patents to the Nepal Gazette instead. Sec. 5(2) has the Department give a notice to a single patent applicant whose application fails.

That is the complete list. The statutory text sits with the Nepal Law Commission, and nothing in it describes the general-practice announcements the Department posts every month.

Is a circular part of the law?

Not in the way the word suggests. We counted it: circular appears zero times in the Act. So does any power to issue one.

That does not make circulars pointless. They are administrative instructions, and they genuinely decide whether your file moves — which form, how many specimens, what certification an attached document needs.

But an administrative instruction sits under the statute, not beside it. If a notice appears to shorten a period the Act sets, the notice is the thing to question.

What can only a Gazette notification change?

Three things, because the Act expressly hands them over. Sec. 18A(1) lets the Government classify goods and services "by a notification in the Nepal Gazette" — that is how Nepal applies the NICE classification of 45 classes without being party to the classification treaty.

Sec. 26A lets the Government alter the fee rates in Schedule 3 the same way. Sec. 2(d) lets it designate which department acts, defaulting to the Department of Industry.

If a change touches classes or official charges, look for the Gazette entry behind it. The Department keeps a page of its own Gazette notices alongside the Bulletin.

Where does the Industrial Property Bulletin fit?

It is the one publication with a statutory job. Sec. 21A(1) obliges the Department to publish registered designs and trade marks, and particulars of renewal or cancellation, for public information.

Note what that sentence actually says: it publishes marks the Department has registered. The Bulletin is not a list of pending applications in the way an applicant usually imagines it.

Patents do not appear there at all. Sec. 7A(1) sends registered patents to the Nepal Gazette, and the word "bulletin" never occurs in the Act. We hold every issue published so far, more than 120 of them, covering 71,500 or more published marks, searchable through our trade mark search.

How long is the objection window really?

This is the deadline that decides whether you can object at all, and the Act's 35-day figures make it easy to misread.

A published trade mark can be opposed within 90 days of its publication in the Industrial Property Bulletin. The 35 days in Sec. 21A(2) is for complaints about the particulars of marks already registered, not the opposition window.

For patents, Sec. 7A(3) measures its 35 days from the date of seeing or copying the patent, not from the notice. Three different starting points, in one short Act.

Rely on the deadline the Department of Industry states for your own file and act before the last day. If a conflicting mark has published, our opposition and enforcement service works to that date.

What does the Department actually publish, and where?

Its site separates these clearly once you know the categories. Mixing them up is what causes a missed date.

The notice feed is the one most worth a bookmark, because it is where the announcement that a new Bulletin has been published appears. Both items of that kind were sitting on the Department's home page when we checked it on 1 October 2026.

Where should you look, and how often?

1. Read the notice feed first. It is the fastest signal that a Bulletin has gone out or that a submission arrangement has changed.
2. Open the Bulletin itself. A notice tells you it exists; only the issue tells you whether a conflicting mark is in it.
3. Check the Gazette notices page. Anything touching classes or official charges should have an entry there.
4. Re-read the directives before filing. An old checklist is the usual reason a clean application comes back.
5. Diary the publication date. Not the date you read about it. The period runs from publication.
6. Re-check before each renewal. Fee rates move by notification, and a renewal term missed by a few days gets expensive.

Why can you not just check a status page instead?

Because there is not one. The Department runs no public online application-status tracker, so a pending file is not visible from outside until it is published.

That is why the notice feed carries more weight here than it would in a country with an online register. It is one of the few public signals an applicant has, and the only one that is free.

Our own application-number lookup searches published marks, which means it finds a file after publication and not before.

Does a notice ever override the Act?

No, and the direction of travel matters. A notice can add a practical requirement, because the Act leaves much "as prescribed". It cannot remove a statutory one.

So a notice asking for an extra certified copy is a cost. A notice appearing to shorten an objection period, change a seven-year term or add a refusal ground is something to query, in writing, before you act on it.

Who is a notice actually addressed to?

Usually everybody, which is why it cannot carry anything personal to your file. The important communications about your own application are not notices at all.

Sec. 5(2) has the Department tell a patent applicant directly that the application cannot proceed. The proviso to Sec. 18(3) goes further for trade marks: before cancelling a registration the Department "shall provide a reasonable opportunity to the holder of the trademark to show cause".

So a threat to your registration arrives as a letter with your name on it, not as a line in a public feed. If one arrives, the reply window is the thing to protect, and our enforcement team would rather see it in week one.

Is there a register you can simply inspect?

There is, and Sec. 22 requires it: the Department maintains separate registers of patents, designs and trade marks, showing registration or cancellation. It is not published online.

That gap between a statutory register and a searchable one is why we built ours from the Bulletin issues themselves. It shows what has been published, which is a narrower thing than what is currently registered, and we say so on every result.

Sec. 24 covers the small but common problem of a lost registration certificate: a copy may be obtained from the Department on payment of the prescribed fee. You can also check a published mark yourself with the owner search.

Can a notice move a renewal date?

No, but it can change what the renewal costs, which catches people out just as effectively. Sec. 23B sets the mechanics and nothing administrative can shift them.

Renewal falls due within 35 days of expiry. Miss it and a six-month late window follows on payment of a fine, after which the registration is cancelled automatically. A trade mark is renewable any number of times; a patent and a design are each capped at twice.

The fee attached to all of that sits in Schedule 3, which Sec. 26A lets the Government alter by Gazette notification. Budget from the current schedule, not last year's, and see our renewal service or the cost of registration for the shape of it.

One cancellation arrives with no publication at all. Sec. 18C lets the Department inquire and cancel a registered mark not brought into use within one year, and no notice will remind you of that anniversary.

What should a foreign applicant watch?

The same feed, for different reasons. Nepal is outside the Madrid System on WIPO's own party list, so every foreign brand owner files nationally and depends on a local representative reading these notices.

Sec. 21B makes it concrete: a mark registered in a foreign country is not valid in Nepal unless registered here. Sec. 21C allows the Department to register a foreign-registered mark without enquiries where the foreign certificate is enclosed, and to extend the Paris Convention facility.

Document certification is exactly the kind of requirement a notice adjusts, so a foreign file is the one most often delayed by an out-of-date checklist. Our note on documents required for trade mark registration is a starting point, not a substitute for checking.

What does this look like in practice?

Imagine a Birgunj noodle maker who filed last year and hears nothing for months. A notice appears announcing a new Bulletin. Inside it is not their mark but a near-identical one from a competitor, already registered. The clock on objecting started on the publication date, not on the day they opened the file, and nobody wrote to tell them. This is an illustration, not a real case, but it is the sequence the notice feed exists to interrupt.

Common mistakes

• Counting a deadline from the day you read the notice rather than from the date of publication.
• Treating a circular as authority for a shortened period. It has none.
• Reading the notice and not opening the Bulletin, so a conflicting mark goes unseen.
• Filing on a checklist saved last year, then waiting weeks for the file to come back.
• Treating publication as permission to use the ® symbol. Sec. 18B prohibits presenting a mark as registered before it is — see what the TM and R symbols really mean.
• Looking for patents in the Bulletin. Sec. 7A(1) puts registered patents in the Nepal Gazette.
• Waiting for a fee notice instead of budgeting, since rates move by notification under Sec. 26A.

In short

The Act names one publishing instrument and it is the Nepal Gazette. Everything else the Department posts is useful, often urgent, and legally subordinate. Read the notices to learn that a clock has started, read the Bulletin to learn whether it is your clock, and treat anything that seems to shorten a statutory period as a question rather than an instruction.

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Nepal is first-to-file, and the published record is the only part of the process outsiders can see. If a notice has landed and you are not sure whether it touches your file, send it to the IP Sewa team and we will read it against your dates.