IP registration in Nepal runs on two statutes and two offices. Trademarks, patents and industrial designs go to the Department of Industry under the Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965. Copyright goes to the Copyright Registrar's Office. The procedures differ more than most guides admit.
Key takeaways
- Registered patents are published in the Nepal Gazette, not the Industrial Property Bulletin — the Bulletin carries designs and trade marks.
- A design may be objected to within 35 days of publication under Sec. 21A; a published trademark has a 90-day opposition window from Bulletin publication.
- A patent objection clock under Sec. 7A(3) runs from seeing or copying the patent, not from the notice.
- Sec. 23B caps renewals: a patent twice, a design twice, a trade mark any number of times.
- Sec. 18C cancels a trade mark not brought into use within one year of registration.
- Only trademarks leave a public per-record trail. Patents, designs and copyright publish counts, not registers.
Which right are you actually registering?
Start here, because the office, the form and the deadlines all follow. Nepal recognises four rights, and one product routinely needs two or three at once.
A trade mark protects the sign that tells buyers whose product this is. A patent protects a new and useful invention. An industrial design protects how an article looks. Copyright protects an original work — writing, music, artwork, film or software — from the moment it is created.
Our guide to the four types of intellectual property in Nepal works through the definitions. This page is about what happens after you have chosen.
Which office takes which filing?
There is no single intellectual property office in Nepal. Industrial property sits inside the Department of Industry (DoI); copyright sits with the Copyright Registrar's Office. A copyright application sent to the DoI achieves nothing.
Our guide to Nepal's IP office explains how the DoI is structured and why people keep looking for a department that does not exist. Confirm counter requirements with the Department of Industry before you travel.
Which Nepali law governs each right?
The Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965 — in Nepali, पेटेण्ट डिजायन र ट्रेडमार्क ऐन, २०२२ — covers all three industrial rights in one statute, amended in 1987 and again in 2006. Copyright runs on the separate Copyright Act 2059 (2002).
There is no "IP Act 2073". That year refers to Nepal's National IP Policy, not a statute, and a consolidating Industrial Property Bill has been discussed for years without being enacted. Treat the 1965 Act as the law in force and read the consolidated text on the Nepal Law Commission site.
If you want the plain-English version of what that Act does and does not reach, see what intellectual property law means in Nepal.
How visible is each right once it is registered?
Very unevenly, and this is the part that surprises people. Trademarks leave a public record of every accepted mark. The other three leave almost nothing the public can search.
IP Sewa extracts every entry from the Industrial Property Bulletin and holds 71,500+ published trademark entries from more than 120 issues. When we scanned all of those issues for design registrations we found no design section in any of them, and for patents a single incidental mention.
Copyright is counted rather than listed. The Copyright Registrar publishes an annual genre-by-year total, which on our last check showed roughly 3,427 works registered cumulatively — no titles, no authors, no registration numbers.
So you can clear a trademark against the published record using the trademark database, but no equivalent public search exists for a Nepali patent or design.
How do you register a trademark in Nepal?
This is the most-used route by a wide margin, and the Act sets out each stage. Sec. 17(1) requires an application in the prescribed format together with four specimens of the mark.
Nepal is first-to-file, so the earliest complete application carries the stronger claim. Sec. 16(1) gives title on registration, not on how long you have been trading under the name.
- Clear the name. Check the published record for identical and near-identical marks in your class before committing to packaging or signage.
- Pick the class. Nepal uses the NICE classification of 45 classes, adopted under Sec. 18A(1). The class finder gives you a starting point.
- File one application per class. Sec. 18A(2) requires separate applications for goods or services in different categories.
- Answer the examination. Sec. 18(1) requires the Department to investigate and to give you a proper opportunity to defend the application.
- Clear the objection period after publication. Designs and trade marks are published under Sec. 21A for public information.
- Take the certificate and start the clocks. The term runs seven years from registration under Sec. 18D.
Our trademark registration service runs that sequence end to end, including the examination correspondence, which is where most self-filed applications stall.
How does a patent filing differ?
In three ways that matter. First, the test. Sec. 5 asks only whether the invention is new and whether it is useful to the general public — the Act contains no inventive-step or prior-art wording, although examiners in practice look at what already exists.
Second, the publication route. Sec. 7A(1) says registered patents, other than those kept secret in the national interest, are published by the Department in the Nepal Gazette. The word "bulletin" does not appear in the Act at all, and patents do not go into the Industrial Property Bulletin that carries trademarks.
Third, an easily missed obligation. Sec. 10 requires the patentee to submit a copy of the design or model of the patented article to the National Archive. Our patent service covers drafting, filing and these post-grant steps.
How does an industrial design filing differ?
A design application is document-heavy rather than argument-heavy. Sec. 13(1) requires the prescribed form with four copies of the design plus maps, drawings and particulars, because the drawings define what you are protecting.
Sec. 14(1) then registers the design unless it hurts the prestige of a person or institution, offends public conduct or morality, undermines the national interest, or is already registered to someone else. Those are the same four grounds the Act applies to trade marks.
The term is five years from registration under Sec. 14A. Preparing the representations well is most of the work, which is what our industrial design service focuses on.
What term does each right get, and how often can you renew?
Sec. 23B is the renewal provision for all three industrial rights, and it does not treat them alike. The cap on designs is the one people get wrong most often.
| Right | Term from registration | Renewal under the Act | Published where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trade mark | Seven years | Any number of times, seven years each | Industrial Property Bulletin |
| Patent | Seven years | Not more than twice, seven years each | Nepal Gazette |
| Industrial design | Five years | Not more than twice, five years each | Industrial Property Bulletin |
| Copyright | Automatic on creation | No renewal; registration is voluntary | Not individually published |
Renewal is tightly timed. Sec. 23B requires it within 35 days of expiry, then allows late renewal within six months on payment of a fine, after which the Act says registration is automatically cancelled. A trade mark's renewal term can repeat without limit. The renewal calculator works out your date, and our renewal service tracks it across a portfolio.
When can someone object to your registration?
After publication, and the window is shorter than most readers expect. For a design, Sec. 21A(2) allows anyone with an objection to complain to the Department within 35 days of publication.
A published trade mark has a 90-day opposition window from publication in the Industrial Property Bulletin. The deadline the DoI states prevails, so act before the last day rather than relying on a number from any guide, including this one.
Patents follow a different trigger again. Sec. 7A(2) lets anyone see or copy the particulars, maps and drawings on payment of a fee, and Sec. 7A(3) then gives 35 days from that act of seeing or copying — not from the Gazette notice — to file a complaint.
Why can a registration still be cancelled later?
Because the Act keeps several cancellation powers alive after the certificate issues, and each requires the Department to let the holder show cause first.
Sec. 18(3) lets the Department cancel a trade mark where one of the Sec. 18(1) refusal grounds turns out to apply. Sec. 6(2) does the same for patents, and Sec. 14(3) for designs.
Sec. 18C is the one that catches ordinary businesses. A trade mark not brought into use within one year from registration is to be inquired into and cancelled, which makes a name registered ahead of a delayed launch genuinely vulnerable.
How long does registration take, and what does it cost?
For an unopposed trademark, plan on roughly 12 to 14 months from filing to certificate, with 6 to 8 months only in the smoothest cases. IP Sewa's own bulletin data shows a median of about 3.5 months from filing to publication, with roughly two in three marks published within six months, but about one in six waits more than two years, so treat any timeline as typical rather than promised.
That range is sourced for trademarks only; no public per-record data exists to measure one for patents or designs.
Cost splits into government charges, set per filing and per class, and professional fees, which follow the work. Classes, drawings, translations and any objection all move it. For a current figure, ask our team.
What must a foreign applicant do differently?
File here. Sec. 21B states plainly that title to a patent, design or trade mark registered in a foreign country is not valid in Nepal unless it is also registered in Nepal by the person concerned.
Nepal is outside the Madrid System for trademarks, the Patent Cooperation Treaty for patents and the Hague System for designs, as WIPO's own party lists show. There is no international filing that reaches Nepal, and no receiving office here.
What is available is Sec. 21C: the Department may register a foreign-registered mark without conducting enquiries where the foreign certificate is enclosed, and the section extends Paris Convention treatment to the holder. A local representative files on your behalf.
Common mistakes with IP registration in Nepal
The expensive errors are nearly all sequencing errors, not legal ones, so a short checklist catches most of them.
One more worth stating plainly: never present an unregistered mark as registered. Sec. 18B prohibits using a trade mark as a registered trade mark without registering it, and Sec. 19 backs that with a fine and confiscation of the goods.
A worked example — an illustration, not a real case
Imagine a Lalitpur workshop launching a cast-iron cookstove. It needs a trade mark for the name and logo, a patent if the burner mechanism is genuinely new and useful, and a design registration for the casing shape.
Each of those is a separate application, and only two of them will ever show up in a bulletin a competitor can read. The patent, if granted, appears in the Gazette instead, and the product photographs rely on copyright that nobody registers.
Sequencing decides the outcome. File the patent before the trade fair, file the design before the casing is shown, and clear the name before the stove is stamped with it.
In short
Identify the right first, because the office, the form, the publication and the objection clock all change with it. Trademarks, patents and designs go to the DoI under one Act; copyright goes elsewhere and does not need registration to exist.
Then treat registration as the start of a schedule, not the end of a job. The one-year use rule, the renewal window and the renewal cap on designs catch more Nepali owners than any examiner does.
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Not sure which right your product needs, or how many applications that works out to? Tell our team what you are launching and we will map it to the filings before you spend anything.
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