GI vs Trademark: Protecting Regional Products in Nepal

A geographical indication and a trade mark are different tools, and Nepal only has one of them. There is no GI law, no GI register and no GI certificate here. A regional product's real options all run through the ordinary trade mark system.

Key takeaways

• Nepal has no geographical indication statute, so there is nothing to apply for.
• The words geographical, indication and appellation appear zero times in the trade mark Act.
• There is also no certification mark under the trade mark law, and no collective mark.
• The separate Nepal Standards (Certification Mark) Act 2037 is a product-standards scheme, not a filing category.
• The bare word ILAM is published as a Class 30 mark to one tea company — a GI regime would prevent that.
• The workable route is one ordinary mark, one owner, and written permission under Sec. 21D.
• Nepal is first-to-file, so the district you have used for decades can be claimed by someone else tomorrow.

What is a geographical indication?

A sign used on goods whose quality, reputation or character comes from where they are made. Champagne, Darjeeling and Roquefort are the familiar examples.

The owner is not a company. In the regimes that have one, a GI belongs to a defined group of producers inside a defined area who meet a published specification.

That is the crucial structural difference. A trade mark answers "whose product is this?"; a GI answers "where is this from, and does it meet the standard for that place?"

Does Nepal have a GI law?

No. The Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act, 2022 (1965) covers exactly three things — patents, designs and trade marks — and creates no fourth register.

You can check this yourself. Search the official English text for geographical, indication or appellation and every one of them returns nothing.

So there is no GI application form at the Department of Industry, no GI examination, and no GI certificate. An article that describes one is describing another country.

That was the position when we last checked the Department's own pages and WIPO Lex's list of Nepali legislation. A bill could change it, so confirm before relying on this, and see which sectors GI systems usually cover.

What about a certification mark?

This needs care, because two different things share a word. There is no certification mark under the trade mark law — the Act creates no such filing category.

Separately, the Department's own downloads list a Nepal Standards (Certification Mark) Act 2037 (1980). That is the NS quality mark: a product-standards statute administered outside the trade mark Act.

The NS scheme certifies that goods meet a national standard. It does not give you a mark you can file at the trade mark register, and it is not a GI.

The same goes for collective marks. Our guide to collective and certification marks in Nepal counts the words over the Act and sets out what a producer group actually gets.

What does the absence look like on the register?

Look at the register. The bare word ILAM is published as a Class 30 mark, application 052874, in the name of a single tea corporation.

In a GI country that is close to unthinkable: the district name belongs to the district's qualifying producers, not to one of them. Here it is an ordinary filing.

GORKHA makes the same point five times over. The bare word appears as a published mark in five different NICE classes, to five different owners.

Those are IP Sewa figures, counted over the marks published in the Department's bulletins rather than taken from an official statistic. Publication is not the same as a live registration.

Can a place name be a trade mark at all?

Sec. 2(c) defines a trade mark as a word, symbol or picture, or a combination, used by any firm, company or individual. A place name is a word.

Sec. 18(1) is where the Department examines and may refuse, and a purely descriptive geographical word is the kind of thing an examiner can push back on.

But the register shows plainly that bare district names do get through. Whether a particular one should have is a question for an advocate, not for this page.

The practical lesson is the reverse of what people assume: do not count on the office to hold a district name open for everyone. It has not.

So what can a producer group actually do?

One legal person owns one ordinary trade mark. A cooperative, an association or a company can hold it; a single member's personal name is the arrangement to avoid.

Sec. 21D(1) lets that owner transfer the mark or "provide approval in writing for its use". Sec. 21D(2) requires a joint application to record it.

Sec. 16(2) is the hook that makes the permission meaningful: it forbids anyone using a registered mark without a transfer or written permission under Sec. 21D.

Everything else — who qualifies, what the standard is, what happens when a member breaks it — the Act leaves entirely to your own written agreement.

How do the two approaches compare?

Does TRIPS give Nepal a GI anyway?

Not directly. A treaty obligation binds the state to legislate; it does not create a register a cooperative can file at tomorrow morning.

Nepal also acceded to the Paris Convention in 2001, which addresses false indications of source and unfair competition in its own way.

Whether Nepal's existing law discharges those commitments is a genuine legal question, and one for a practising advocate rather than for us.

Why does first-to-file make this urgent?

Sec. 16(1) ties title to registration, not to use. Decades of local production do not reserve the name for the people producing it.

So the risk for a regional product is not abstract. Someone outside the district can file the district's name, and the register will back them.

The ILAM and GORKHA entries above are what that looks like once it has happened. Filing early is the only part of this you control.

Which class does a regional product go in?

The NICE classification has 45 classes, and Sec. 18A(1) gives the Department power to adopt a classification by notification in the Nepal Gazette.

Tea, coffee, honey and spices sit in different goods classes, and selling them through your own shop is a services class again.

Work it out before you file rather than after. Our NICE class finder and AI classifier narrow it down in a couple of minutes, and class search shows who is already there.

What does the filing route look like?

1. Agree the owner first. One legal person, decided before anything is designed or printed.
2. Search what is already published. Check the district name and your intended brand against the register.
3. Make the mark distinctive. A bare place name is the weakest thing you can file; add an invented element.
4. Pick the class, or classes. Goods and the shop that sells them are separate applications.
5. File at the Department, with a power of attorney where an agent acts for you.
6. Watch the Industrial Property Bulletin. Publication opens the 90-day opposition window in trade mark practice.
7. Write the user agreement, and record approvals under Sec. 21D as members join.

How can you check the register yourself?

Search the published marks in our trademark database before you commit to a name. It covers marks published in the Department's bulletins, not live registration status, and a full clearance search goes further.

The owner search shows what a particular cooperative or company already holds, which is often the fastest way to see whether a district name is taken.

If you find something close, our conflict checker compares a proposed name against what is published and flags the near misses.

How would one valley actually do it?

This is an illustration, not a real case. Eleven orthodox tea growers in a single valley want one badge that buyers recognise.

They cannot file a GI, so the cooperative itself registers a distinctive invented name with an emblem, in the tea goods class, and takes the registration certificate in its own name.

Each grower signs a written agreement setting the altitude, processing method and inspection the badge stands for, and each is recorded as an approved user under Sec. 21D. The filing itself is our trademark registration work.

Any grower may still say truthfully where their tea comes from. What they may not do is put the cooperative's badge on tea that failed the inspection, and that is a trade mark claim the cooperative can actually bring.

Common mistakes

• Looking for a GI application form. There is none, and time spent hunting for it is lost.
• Treating the NS quality mark as a trade mark filing. It is a separate standards scheme.
• Filing a bare district name and expecting it to stop neighbours describing their origin honestly.
• Registering in one member's personal name, which lets that member lock the others out later.
• Using the ® symbol before registration. Sec. 18B prohibits presenting a mark as registered when it is not.
• Assuming ™ has legal meaning here. The Act never mentions it, so it is a business habit, not a right.
• Letting the renewal term lapse. A mark that is not renewed is cancelled, and the district name is open again.

What happens if someone misuses the mark?

Sec. 19 provides a fine and confiscation of the goods connected with the offence, on the orders of the Department, as per the gravity of the offence.

That is a real remedy, but it protects your registered mark. It does nothing about a trader who truthfully or falsely describes their goods as coming from your district.

Where a rival mark is published and you want to object, our opposition and enforcement service handles that window.

In short, what should a regional producer do?

Nepal offers a trade mark and nothing else. There is no GI register, no certification mark under the trade mark law, and no collective mark — as the Chyangra Pashmina story shows in practice.

A regional product protects itself by putting one distinctive mark in one owner's name, licensing it in writing under Sec. 21D, and filing before somebody else files the district.

People also search for

• Geographical indications in Nepal, in full
• Protecting Ilam tea and Nepali tea brands
• Nepali coffee as a brand
• Handicrafts and artisan products
• Allo and Dhaka textile brands
• Traditional knowledge and folklore

If your cooperative needs the ownership and the user agreement set up properly before anyone prints a label, tell us who the members are and what the badge has to promise.