A Nepali registration protects you in Nepal and nowhere else. Nepal is outside the Madrid System, so an exporter files country by country in each market that matters. The one shortcut is Paris Convention priority, and for a trade mark it lasts six months.
Key takeaways
- Rights are territorial, so a Department of Industry registration has no force outside Nepal.
- Sec. 21B says the same thing in reverse: a foreign registration is not valid here until registered here.
- Nepal belongs to none of the Madrid, PCT or Hague filing systems, so there is no one-application route out.
- Nepal joined the Paris Convention in 2001, which is where the priority window comes from.
- That window is six months for trade marks and designs, and twelve months for patents.
- Nepal has no collective mark, no certification mark and no geographical indication to take abroad.
- Your distributor agreement is the cheapest protection you will ever buy, and the easiest to forget.
Why does a Nepal registration stop at the border?
Because every trade mark system is national. The Department of Industry registers marks for Nepal, and its register has no authority over a shop in Delhi or a marketplace listing in Dubai.
That is not a gap in Nepali law. Every country you export to takes exactly the same view of its own register.
So the practical question is never "am I protected?" It is "in which countries, and are those the ones I sell into?"
What does Sec. 21B prove about the other direction?
It is the clearest statement of the rule in the Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965, written the inbound way round. Title to a patent, design or trade mark registered in a foreign country is not valid in Nepal unless it is registered in Nepal by the person concerned.
Read that sentence with your own brand in mind and swap the countries. A British or Indian register is just as unimpressed by your Kathmandu certificate.
The statute sits with the Nepal Law Commission, and the section is short enough to read in a minute.
Who actually files in Nepal from abroad, and why?
Almost everyone. Of the published bulletin entries in our index that record an applicant country, roughly 43,000 belong to applicants in Nepal and about 27,800 to applicants somewhere else.
Those foreign applicants come from 99 other countries, led by India, the United States, China and Japan. Every one of them filed a separate Nepali application because no other route existed.
This is an IP Sewa figure drawn from published bulletin entries, not an official Department statistic. Our register statistics page explains how these counts are built.
It still makes the point better than any argument. The world's largest brands file here one country at a time, and so must you.
Which filing treaties is Nepal outside?
All three of the ones an exporter would want. Nepal is not a party to the Madrid System for trade marks, the Patent Cooperation Treaty for patents, or the Hague System for industrial designs.
That means there is no single application you can file from Kathmandu that reaches several countries at once. It also means a Nepali national has no receiving office here for an international patent application.
Nepal does hold the WIPO Convention, the Paris Convention and Berne. Check the current membership tables at WIPO before relying on any of this, because treaty lists are republished.
What does Paris Convention priority actually give you?
A date, not a registration. If you file in Nepal first, you may claim that Nepali filing date in another Paris country, provided you file there inside the window.
Anything that happens in between, such as a stranger filing the same name in that country, is then treated as coming after your date. That is the whole benefit, and it is a large one.
It does not remove foreign examination, a local agent, translation or an opposition. Each destination office still runs its own process on its own timetable.
How long is the window for each right?
Six months for a trade mark or an industrial design, and twelve months for a patent, counted from the first filing. The 1965 Act does not state these periods itself; they come from the Convention.
Six months is shorter than it sounds. Packaging trials, a distributor negotiation and a trade fair can eat it before anyone remembers the deadline.
| Right | Paris priority window | Nepal term | Is there a one-shot international filing? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trade mark | Six months | Seven years, renewable without limit | No. Nepal is outside Madrid. |
| Industrial design | Six months | Five years, renewable | No. Nepal is outside Hague. |
| Patent | Twelve months | Seven years, renewable twice | No. Nepal is outside the PCT. |
| Shared regional name | Not applicable | No such Nepali right exists | No. There is nothing to take abroad. |
What should you record on the day you file in Nepal?
Everything a foreign agent will ask for six months later, while it is still in front of you. The application number and filing date come first.
Then the exact mark as filed, the goods and services wording, and the applicant's legal name and address spelled the way the form spells them.
Send that packet to your foreign representatives early rather than at the deadline. A priority claim usually needs a certified copy of the Nepali filing in English, and certified copies take time to obtain.
Which markets should you file in first?
The ones where a loss would actually hurt. Start with countries where you sell directly, ship through a distributor, manufacture or pack, or already see imitations.
Add the countries where you advertise heavily even if sales are small, because a marketplace listing is where a copycat usually finds you.
Filing everywhere is rarely the right answer. A ranked list of four or five real markets beats a scattergun nobody renews, and our clearance service can check the Nepali end of it.
What can an exporter own besides the brand name?
The appearance of the product, through an industrial design, and a genuinely new technical invention, through a patent. Both are territorial in the same way.
Design protection usually depends on novelty, so file before the product is shown publicly if the destination country requires it. A trade fair counts as showing it.
Original artwork and photographs sit under copyright law, which works differently again. Keep the dated files and the contracts saying who made them.
How do the classes divide an export range?
By what you sell, not by what you call it. Nepal uses the international NICE classification of 45 classes, and Sec. 18A(2) requires a separate application for each category of goods.
A tea business selling packets and running a cafe is looking at two applications, not one. Our class finder gives you a first draft of the list.
Quote a class heading from WIPO's current list rather than an old article, because the headings are revised and widely copied versions go stale.
What about pashmina, a district tea or another shared-origin product?
This is where most advice about Nepal goes wrong, so be careful with it. Nepal has no collective mark, no certification mark and no geographical indication as filing categories.
Counted over the official English text of the Act, the words "collective", "geographical", "indication" and "appellation" each appear zero times. "Certification" appears once, in a fee table, where it prices a certified copy of a record.
So a producer group cannot file a collective mark here and then present it abroad. There is nothing of that kind to present.
What can a producer group do instead?
Register an ordinary trade mark in the name of one legal person, then permit the others to use it in writing. Sec. 21D lets an owner give written approval for use, recorded by a joint application at the Department.
The rulebook a collective system would have published for you becomes your own contract: who may use the mark, what standard the goods meet, who inspects, and what happens when someone fails.
Our template guides to a trade mark licence and an assignment agreement show the shape of those documents.
Why does the missing category cost an exporter more than a domestic seller?
Because buyers abroad read those labels. A European importer who asks for your certification-mark number is asking for a document Nepali law does not issue.
The honest answer is better than an invented one: you hold a registered trade mark, the standard is contractual, and here is the agreement that governs it.
If the destination market does run a collective or certification register, you can apply there on that market's terms. That is a foreign filing, decided by foreign law.
How does an export filing plan run, step by step?
- Fix the owner. The company that trades, not the founder personally, unless there is a reason.
- Search Nepal first. Start with our conflict checker against published marks.
- Pick the classes. One application per category, so list the goods before you count the cost.
- File in Nepal. The prescribed form, with the specimens the Department asks for.
- Diary the priority date. Six months for marks and designs, twelve for patents.
- Clear each destination. A local agent searches that register before you commit to a label.
- File abroad inside the window. Same mark, same owner, priority claimed on the form.
- Sign the distributor agreement before the first container leaves.
What must a distributor agreement say?
That the exporter owns the mark, the distributor may use it only as permitted, and the distributor may not register it, a translation of it, or a matching domain name.
Add packaging approval, the exact authorised artwork, ownership of marketplace accounts and local domains, and what transfers back when the relationship ends.
A contract does not replace a foreign registration. It does decide who wins the argument while the registration is still pending.
What happens if a distributor files your mark first?
You are in that country's system, arguing under its rules, on its deadlines. Some offices have a bad-faith ground; others will look mainly at who filed first.
Gather evidence before you write to anyone: invoices, shipping documents, dated artwork, catalogues, marketplace listings and your Nepali filing date.
Then take local advice. Our enforcement team handles the Nepali side and can work alongside a representative in the destination market.
Does selling only abroad put your Nepali registration at risk?
It is a fair question, and one for an advocate. Sec. 18C provides that a registered mark not brought into use within one year of registration may be cancelled after inquiry by the Department.
Whether goods manufactured in Nepal and shipped out count as use in Nepal is exactly the sort of point on which you want a considered answer, not a blog's guess.
Keep the evidence either way. Invoices, labels, production records and advertising are what an inquiry would look at.
Where do you watch for copies at home?
New Nepali marks are published in the Industrial Property Bulletin by the Department of Industry, and an objection follows publication. Sec. 21A(2) states 35 days, while trade mark practice treats the opposition window as 90 days, so confirm the count that applies to your own case.
Our register search indexes those published entries, and the owner search shows what a competitor already holds.
Watching foreign registers is a separate job, done by your agent in each market. Nothing in Nepal will alert you to a filing in Delhi.
Common mistakes
- Treating a Nepali certificate as an export passport. It reaches the border and stops.
- Believing Madrid covers Nepal. Nepal is not a member, in either direction.
- Letting the six-month window lapse while packaging is still being argued about.
- Filing in the founder's name while the company pays for everything.
- Promising a buyer a certification mark that Nepali law does not issue.
- Showing the product at a fair before the design application is filed.
- Giving a distributor the artwork with nothing in writing about who owns it.
A worked example
This is an illustration, not a real case. A Kathmandu company sells orthodox tea under a coined name and wants India and the Gulf.
It files the word and the device in Nepal in the tea class, diaries the priority date, and instructs agents in both destinations inside six months.
Its distributor agreement bans local registration outright, and its packaging file records every approved label version. None of that required a category Nepal does not have.
In short
Protection is bought one country at a time, and the Nepali filing is the first purchase rather than the only one.
File at home, diary the priority window, clear each destination and sign the distributor agreement before the goods move.
Start by checking what already exists on our trade mark search, then let our filing team build the country list with you.
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Tell us which markets your goods actually reach, and we will map the filings against them. Send us the country list and the product range and we will come back with a plan you can budget.
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