There is no eighteen-month patent publication in Nepal. The Act publishes a patent in the Nepal Gazette after it is registered, and the drawings are released only to someone who asks and pays. In practice your invention goes public much earlier — when you show it.
Key takeaways
- Nepal's Act has no automatic publication timetable. The 18-month rule belongs to the PCT and to laws that copied it.
- Sec. 7A(1): patents registered under the Act are published by the Department in the Nepal Gazette.
- The Industrial Property Bulletin publishes trademarks. The word "Bulletin" never appears in the Act.
- Sec. 7A(2): the particulars, maps and drawings are seen or copied only on request, on payment.
- Sec. 7A(3): an objection runs 35 days from seeing or copying the patent, not from the notice.
- Patents kept secret in the national interest are not published at all.
- Your own demonstration or sale is the disclosure that usually matters, because Nepal is first-to-file.
Why are you reading about 18 months?
Because almost every patent system you have read about publishes a pending application eighteen months after its earliest filing date.
That rule comes from the Patent Cooperation Treaty. PCT Article 21(2)(a) says international publication "shall be effected promptly after the expiration of 18 months from the priority date".
India copied the idea into its own statute, and searchers land here looking for the Nepali equivalent.
There is none. Nepal's Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965 sets no publication clock running from filing at all.
What does the Act actually say?
Sec. 7A(1) is the only patent publication provision in the whole statute. Read it slowly, because one word does the work.
"Patents registered under this Act, other than those which must be kept secret in the national interest, shall be published by the Department in the Nepal Gazette for the information of the public."
Registered. The publication described by the Act comes after the Department has issued the registration certificate under Sec. 7, not before it.
You can read the official English text on the Nepal Law Commission site and check the wording yourself.
Where does that leave the Industrial Property Bulletin?
With trademarks. The word "Bulletin" does not appear anywhere in the Act, and Sec. 21A — the publication provision people usually have in mind — covers designs and trade marks registered under Sec. 14 and Sec. 18.
IP Sewa's own archive makes the same point from the other direction. We hold more than 71,500 entries extracted from 122 bulletin issues, and every one of them is a trademark.
So if you are waiting to see a patent appear in the Bulletin, you are watching the wrong publication.
Does the Gazette notice show your drawings?
Not by itself. Sec. 7A(2) says that a person who "desires to see or copy the particulars, maps, or drawings" of a published patent may be allowed to do so after paying the fee the Department prescribes.
So the Act separates two things most systems combine: a public notice that a patent exists, and access to the technical file behind it.
A rival who wants your specification has to go and ask for it. That is a small friction, not a protection, and you should not plan around it.
When does the objection clock start?
This is the part that surprises people who know other systems. Sec. 7A(3) gives 35 days from "the date of seeing or copying the patent" under sub-section (2).
The window therefore starts when a particular person inspects the file, not on the day the notice appears in the Gazette.
Compare Sec. 21A, which gives 35 days from the date of publication for a design or a trade mark. Patents are worded differently, and deliberately so.
If an objection is filed, Sec. 7A(4) requires the Department to take action after holding inquiries.
How do the three rights compare?
Nepal treats patents, designs and trade marks under separate publication provisions, and the differences are easy to miss.
| Right | Where it is published | Published before or after registration | Objection window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patent | Nepal Gazette (Sec. 7A) | After registration, on the Act's wording | 35 days from seeing or copying the file |
| Design | Published by the Department (Sec. 21A) | After registration under Sec. 14 of the Act. | 35 days from publication |
| Trade mark | Industrial Property Bulletin (Sec. 21A) | Published in practice before the certificate | 90 days in DoI practice |
The trademark row is the one everyone knows, and it is the one that does not match the others.
What does the notice show, and what does it hold back?
Keep the two apart in your head. The Gazette entry is an announcement; the Department's file is the technical record behind it.
Does practice follow the Act exactly?
We cannot promise that it does, and we would rather say so than guess. Advocate summaries of Department practice describe publication after the application is accepted, with an objection period of 35 days.
The statutory text places publication after registration and starts the 35 days from inspection. Both descriptions agree on the length of the window and on who decides an objection.
Confirm the current sequence with the Department of Industry or an advocate before you rely on a date. Our patent application process guide sets out the stages in order.
So when does your invention really become public?
Usually long before any of this, and by your own hand. There are three separate moments, and only the first is under your control.
Why does your own disclosure matter so much?
Because Sec. 5 asks the Department to investigate whether the invention "is a new invention or not, and whether it is useful to the general public or not".
New means new to the world, not new to Nepal. Anything already available to the public can be held against you, including something you published yourself.
The Act writes in no grace period for an inventor's own earlier disclosure. Treat that silence as a risk, not as permission.
Our guide to what can be patented in Nepal and its companion on what cannot set the boundary.
What should you do before showing an invention?
- Write it down and date it. A dated record is the cheapest evidence you will ever create.
- Search first. Our note on searching patents from Nepal covers the free databases.
- Use written confidentiality. Suppliers, prototypers and investors should all sign before they see it.
- File before the fair. Not after it, and not on the morning of it.
- Keep the specification full. You usually cannot add technical matter later.
- Check the priority window. A Paris Convention claim runs twelve months from a first foreign filing.
- Diarise the registration certificate. The renewal term is counted from registration.
Can a Nepali applicant use the PCT publication route?
No. WIPO's own depositary table for the Patent Cooperation Treaty, at the status date of 19 May 2026, lists 159 contracting States, and Nepal is not among them.
India and Sri Lanka are the South Asian members. Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Maldives and Nepal are all outside it.
So there is no receiving office here and no international publication of a Nepali application. WIPO publishes the current list, and status dates move.
The alternatives are compared in our guide to filing patents abroad from Nepal.
Does a foreign publication still affect you?
Yes, and this is the trap that runs the other way. An international application published at eighteen months is available to the whole world, Nepal included.
If you file abroad first and let that publication happen before you file here, the published document exists before your Nepali application.
The Paris Convention route is the usual answer: file in Nepal within twelve months of the first foreign filing and claim priority.
How many Nepali patents are there to publish?
Very few. The Economic Survey 2082/83 records about 90 patents in total, cumulative to Falgun 2082, alongside roughly 71,000 trademarks and 320 designs.
Ninety across the whole history of the register means Gazette patent notices are rare events, and there is no searchable Nepali patent corpus to read. A utility model is not a separate Nepali right either.
That is one more reason to do your prior-art work in foreign databases. Our note on how patent protection works here explains what the right is actually worth.
What happens after publication?
The right runs. Sec. 8 gives seven years from the date of registration, and Sec. 23B allows renewal not more than twice, in seven-year terms.
That is a renewal term of up to twenty-one years in all, well short of the twenty years from filing most readers expect elsewhere.
Renewal must be filed within 35 days of expiry, with a late period of six months on a fine, after which the registration is cancelled automatically.
The free renewal calculator works out the dates, and our patent renewal guide covers the windows.
Does the inventor have any other filing duty?
One that is easy to miss. Sec. 10 requires the patentee to submit a copy of the design or model of the article made under the patent to the National Archives.
It is an archival deposit rather than a publication, but it is a statutory obligation attached to a granted Nepali patent.
Common mistakes
- Waiting for a Bulletin entry. Patents are not published there; trademarks are.
- Assuming an 18-month clock. Nepal's Act sets no publication timetable from filing.
- Treating the Gazette notice as disclosure of the file. The drawings come out only on request.
- Counting 35 days from the notice. For patents the window runs from inspection.
- Launching before filing. Nepal is first-to-file, and the Act writes in no grace period.
- Filing the wrong right. A shape may be an industrial design rather than a patent.
A worked example
This is an illustration, not a real case. A Pokhara engineer designs a sediment filter for micro-hydro intakes and files at the Department with drawings and a description.
She shows a working unit at a trade fair two months before filing, and photographs of it circulate online the same week.
Nothing is published by the Department for a long time. Her problem is not publication at all — it is that the fair made the invention available to the public before her filing date.
Had she filed first and demonstrated second, the same fair would have been marketing rather than a disclosure that undermines her own application.
What should a foreign applicant expect?
A direct national filing, made through a local representative under a power of attorney, because no international route reaches Nepal.
Sec. 21B is explicit that a patent registered in a foreign country is not valid here unless it is also registered in Nepal.
Our patent team drafts, files and answers the Department, and enforcement is a separate question again.
In short
Nepal publishes a patent once it is registered, in the Nepal Gazette, and opens the file only to a person who asks and pays for it.
There is no eighteen-month publication, no Bulletin entry, and no fixed clock anywhere in the Act. Only the secrecy exception can stop publication altogether.
Plan around the disclosure you control instead. File before you show it, and talk to our team if the fair is already in the diary.
People also search for
- How to register a patent in Nepal
- Which right protects what
- How long IP registration takes here
- A plain-English glossary of IP terms
Only the Department of Industry can confirm how it handles publication in a live case, and legal-effect questions belong with an advocate. If you are deciding whether to show an invention before you file, talk to us first.
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