Protect a farm, dairy or seed brand in Nepal by registering the name or logo as a trade mark at the Department of Industry under the Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965. One owner, one class per application, and a written agreement if others will use it.
Key takeaways
- Nepal is first-to-file: title comes from registration under Sec. 16(1), not from trading first.
- Sec. 18A(2) requires a separate application for each category, so milk, seeds and a farm shop are separate filings.
- Nepal has no collective mark and no certification mark, which matters to every cooperative reading this.
- A cooperative registers an ordinary mark in its own name and approves each user in writing under Sec. 21D.
- Our index shows 83 published entries already held by Nepali cooperatives, all of them ordinary marks.
- Filing to bulletin publication often runs 15 to 18 months on our own measurements, and longer is common.
- The term is seven years under Sec. 18D, renewable in seven-year terms without limit.
What are you actually protecting?
Four different things, and only one of them is a trade mark. Separating them early saves a farm business from paying for the wrong right.
The brand is the name and logo on the carton. The artwork on it is a separate creative work, and the shape of a distinctive bottle is a third thing.
The fourth is not a registration at all. It is the agreement that decides who may put your name on their milk, and it matters most to cooperatives.
Can a cooperative use a collective mark?
No. Nepal has no collective mark, and this is the single most common error in writing about Nepali cooperatives.
The word "collective" appears zero times in the Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965. So do "association", "members", "cooperative", "society", "quality" and "standard".
"Certification" appears once, as a fee line in Schedule 3 that prices a certified copy of a record. It is a photocopying charge, not a kind of mark.
What does the Act actually offer a group?
Sec. 2(c) describes a trade mark used by "any firm, company or individual" to distinguish its own goods. The subject of that sentence is one legal person.
So a dairy cooperative registers its mark in the cooperative's own name, exactly as a private company would. The cooperative is the owner; its members are not co-owners.
Shared use then runs through Sec. 21D, which lets the owner give written approval for another party to use the mark. Both sides file a joint application at the Department.
That is the whole machinery. No rulebook is filed and no standard is published, so whatever a collective regime would have supplied sits in your own contract.
Is any Nepali cooperative already on the register?
Many. Our index of marks published in the Industrial Property Bulletin holds 83 entries whose applicant name contains "Sahakari" or "cooperative", and every one is an ordinary trade mark.
A clear example is SINDHUKA, filed by Phulbari Krishi Sahakari Sanstha Limited of Kavrepalanchok on 20 December 2018 as three separate applications.
They are 078225 in Class 29 for dairy products, 078226 in Class 30 for grains and foodstuff, and 078227 in Class 35 for retailing. One device, one owner, three numbers.
That is the one-application-per-class rule visible in our own data rather than quoted from a statute. A cooperative selling three things plans three filings.
Which class does each product belong in?
The class follows what you sell, not what you call it. Processed dairy usually sits in one class, fresh produce and sowing seed in another, and a farm shop in a services class.
Class 29 holds 2,555 published entries in our index and Class 31 holds 1,226, so neither is as crowded as Class 30. The NICE class finder is a good first sort.
| What you sell | Usual class | Filing point |
|---|---|---|
| Milk, yoghurt, ghee, butter, cheese, paneer | Class 29 | Processed and packaged dairy goods. |
| Fresh fruit, vegetables, unmilled grain, seed for sowing | Class 31 | Protects the seed brand, not the seed variety. |
| Rice, flour, tea, spices, other processed staples | Class 30 | The most crowded of the food classes. |
| Veterinary and animal-health preparations | Class 5 | Do not assume every feed product belongs here. |
| Farm shop, wholesale or online selling | Class 35 | Covers the service, not the goods sold through it. |
How do you register the brand?
- Fix the owner. One legal person: the cooperative, the company or a named individual, decided before anything is printed.
- Search the register. Check the name, its spellings and its sound-alikes in our trademark database before ordering cartons.
- Decide the mark. A wordmark, a device, or both. File what you will actually put on the pack.
- Map every product to a class. One application per category under Sec. 18A(2), with a precise goods description.
- File at the Department. The Sec. 17 form with four specimens of the mark, plus the applicant's authority documents.
- Answer the examiner. Expect questions where a name is descriptive, or close to something already registered.
- Watch the publication. The mark appears in the Industrial Property Bulletin, and the objection window runs from there.
- Record each approved user. A joint application under Sec. 21D for every member or packer who will use the name.
Our registration team handles the filing, and the conflict checker is the quickest way to rule a name out before you get attached to it.
Who should the applicant be?
The body that will control the brand and pay to defend it. For a cooperative that is the cooperative itself, not the chairperson and not the largest member.
Filing in a founder's personal name is the mistake that breaks farm groups later. When the relationship sours, the register backs the person named on it.
Keep the name identical across your registration papers, packaging and application. Inconsistency creates avoidable questions at examination.
What does a cooperative have to write down itself?
Everything a collective mark regime would have published on your behalf, because nothing here does it for you.
Who qualifies to use the name. What the milk, seed or produce has to meet. Who inspects, how often, and what records survive the visit.
Then the part nobody enjoys drafting: what happens when a member breaks the standard, how fast stock is relabelled, and who pays.
That document is a contract, so have a lawyer draft it rather than adapting an Indian template written for a category Nepal never enacted.
How long does it take?
Longer than most articles say. Measured across our own index of recent issues, the gap from filing to bulletin publication is often 15 to 18 months, and the spread is wide.
Two farm examples make that concrete. SINDHUKA was filed in December 2018 and published in March 2021, about 27 months.
BAGDEV DAIRY, filed by a milk-producers' cooperative in July 2022, was published in May 2024, about 23 months. Both are single data points, not a schedule.
Publication is not the finish line either, because the objection window runs from it. Plan the launch around the filing date, not the certificate.
Can you write TM or the R symbol on the pack?
Be careful, because the usual advice is written for other countries. The Act never mentions the TM symbol, and the registered symbol is absent too.
Sec. 18B prohibits presenting a mark as registered when it is not, and Sec. 19 backs that with a fine and confiscation of the goods involved.
So the symbol carries no Nepali legal effect, and the risk runs one way only. Until the registration exists, the safe choice is to claim nothing on the label.
What does the Department examine?
The proviso to Sec. 18(1) lists the grounds for refusal, and they are narrower than most applicants expect.
A mark is refused if it hurts the prestige of a person or institution, damages public conduct, morality or the national interest, harms another mark's goodwill, or is already registered to someone else.
Descriptiveness is handled through examination rather than through that list, which is why "Fresh Milk" is a hard name to defend.
What documents does the application need?
The prescribed form, four specimens of the mark, and proof that the applicant exists and has authorised the filing.
A company or cooperative usually adds a board or committee resolution, its registration certificate and current tax clearance. An agent needs a notarised power of attorney.
A foreign owner files nationally through a Nepal-based agent, because Nepal is not in the Madrid System and a foreign registration has no effect here on its own.
Is a seed brand the same as a seed variety?
No, and the two are often confused. A trade mark in Class 31 protects the name on the packet, and nothing about it approves the variety inside.
Variety release runs through the agricultural system on a separate track. A business breeding something new should take advice on both tracks.
How long does the registration last?
Seven years from registration under Sec. 18D, then renewable in further seven-year terms any number of times under Sec. 23B(3).
Renewal falls due within 35 days of expiry, with a six-month late window on payment of a fine, after which the registration is cancelled automatically.
A cooperative committee that changes every two years loses paperwork faster than it loses deadlines, so put the dates in the renewal calculator and hand our renewal service the file.
What if nobody uses the mark?
Sec. 18C lets the Department cancel a registered mark not brought into use within one year of registration, after inquiry.
That is a real risk for a farm group that registers a name while it is still arguing about the standard. File when the scheme is nearly ready.
How do you spot a copy?
Marks are published under Sec. 21A(1), and Sec. 21A(2) allows an objection within 35 days, although the trade mark opposition window is treated in practice as 90 days from publication.
Somebody has to read each new issue, and in a cooperative that job needs a name against it. The owner search shows what a rival group already holds.
If something close appears, our opposition and enforcement team can assess it before the window closes.
Where can you verify all this?
Go to the primary material rather than to a summary, including this one. The statute sits with the Nepal Law Commission, and the section numbers above are searchable in it.
The registering body publishes its own forms and service list at the Department of Industry, which is where a filing is actually made.
For the international picture, including which treaties Nepal has and has not joined, WIPO keeps the dated membership tables.
Common mistakes
- Asking for a collective mark form. There is not one to give you.
- Printing cartons before searching. The cheapest conflict is the one found first.
- Filing only Class 35. A shop class does not protect branded milk.
- Registering in the chairperson's name. The register will back that person, not the group.
- Assuming company registration is enough. A company name at the registrar is not a trade mark.
- Letting members use the name on a handshake. Record the approval under Sec. 21D.
A worked example
This is an illustration, not a real case. A district milk cooperative sells packaged yoghurt, bottled milk and vegetable seed under one mountain-themed name.
It registers the cooperative as owner, files the name and device in the dairy class and the seed class, and leaves the farm-shop service for a later filing.
Its members' agreement sets the collection standard, the testing schedule and the penalty for a failed batch, and each member goes on record as an approved user.
When a member leaves two years later, the cooperative holds both a contract and a Department record ending the approval. That is what the paperwork is for.
What about selling abroad?
Nepal is outside the Madrid System, the PCT and the Hague system, so no single filing covers other countries. Each export market needs its own national application.
A Paris Convention priority claim may preserve your Nepali filing date abroad where the conditions are met. Our guide to IP for Nepali exporters covers the sequence.
In short
Register the brand in the name of one body, file one application per class, and start with the product that carries the reputation.
Do not go looking for a collective or certification mark, because Nepal has neither. Write the rules yourself and record each user under Sec. 21D.
Check what is already published through our register search, and let our clearance service test a name before the labels are ordered.
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If you run a dairy, a farm business or a cooperative and need the owner, the classes and the members' agreement settled before you file, tell us what you sell and who will be allowed to use the name.
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