Protect a coffee or tea brand in Nepal by filing the name and logo as trade marks at the Department of Industry, once for each class your business touches. Roasted beans, a tasting room and an online shop are three different classes, and one application will not reach all three.
Key takeaways
- A Nepali application covers one class, so most coffee and tea brands need several.
- Packaged coffee and tea normally sit in Class 30.
- A cafe or tea house is a service, usually Class 43, and the packet does not cover it.
- Nepal is first-to-file, so the queue matters more than who used the name first.
- Nepal has no geographical indication law, and no collective or certification mark either.
- The ® symbol has no Nepali legal standing, and using it too early is prohibited.
- Nepal is outside the Madrid System, so every export market needs its own filing.
Why is a coffee or tea brand a classification problem?
Because the same name does three jobs at once. It sits on a packet, above a counter and on a website that takes orders, and Nepali law treats those as separate.
A clothing brand mostly sells goods. A coffee brand that opens a tasting room has crossed from goods into services, and the register does not follow it there automatically.
What does one application actually cover?
One class, for the goods or services written into it. Everything outside that wording is unprotected by that registration, however famous the name becomes.
The rule is visible in the register, where businesses file the same logo two or three times on the same day. That is not duplication but the only way to cover a range.
Which class covers the packet?
Class 30 is the usual home for roasted coffee, tea, and blends sold in packaging. It is the class most Nepali coffee and tea brands file first, because the packet is the product.
Write the goods in plain words rather than copying a class heading. "Roasted coffee beans; ground coffee; tea" tells an examiner more than general wording, and our goods and services search shows how other marks phrase it.
Which class covers the cafe?
Class 43 covers services for providing food and drink, which is what a cafe or tea house sells. The customer buys an experience in a room, not a packet to carry home.
This is the split people miss. A brand with a strong Class 30 registration and no service filing has left the name on its own shopfront unprotected.
Our guide to protecting a restaurant or cafe brand works through the service side in more detail.
Do you need Class 31 or Class 32 as well?
Only if you sell those things. Class 31 covers unprocessed agricultural produce, which can matter to an estate selling green leaf or unroasted beans, and Class 32 covers non-alcoholic drinks such as a bottled cold brew.
| What the business sells | Likely class | The test |
|---|---|---|
| Roasted coffee, packaged tea, blends | 30 | Is it the processed product in a packet? |
| Green leaf, unroasted beans | 31 | Is it sold before processing? |
| Bottled iced tea or cold brew | 32 | Is it a ready-to-drink beverage? |
| A shop, a wholesale arm, an online store | 35 | Are you selling other people's goods too? |
| A cafe, tea house or tasting room | 43 | Is the customer served on the premises? |
Class numbers follow the wording, not the industry, so test your list before filing. Our NICE class finder and the AI classifier both work from a plain description of what you sell.
What happens if you file only one class?
You get a real right, in a narrow lane. A competitor can then register the same name for a neighbouring activity, and you will be arguing about similarity rather than pointing at a registration.
That argument is winnable, and our opposition and enforcement service runs it, but it is slower than owning the class outright.
That is not a reason to file everything, but a reason to file deliberately and revisit the list as the business grows. Browsing what is already published in a class shows how crowded it is.
Should the name and the logo be separate filings?
Often, yes. A word mark protects the words however they are set, while a logo filing protects the arrangement you submitted, and a redesign can leave it behind.
If the budget allows only one, most coffee and tea brands are better served by the word. The name is what customers say out loud and what a copier borrows.
Why does filing order matter in Nepal?
Nepal is a first-to-file country. The earliest complete application generally takes priority, whatever the market history behind a later one.
A busy stall at a weekend market, three years of invoices and a following online are all useful evidence in a dispute. None of them is a registration.
How do you search before you file?
Start with the words, then the near misses. Our Nepal trade mark search covers marks published in the Industrial Property Bulletin, and you should try spellings, translations and sound-alikes rather than only the exact name.
A published-mark search is screening, not clearance. It does not show applications that have not yet been published, so treat a clean result as encouraging, not final.
What does the filing itself involve?
- Settle the owner. The company or person who will actually hold the brand, named as in the records.
- Search. Check the name and the logo in every class you intend to file in.
- Write the goods. Specific wording for each class, matching what you sell now.
- File one application per class. With the mark label and a notarised power of attorney where an agent signs.
- Answer the examiner. Objections on similarity or distinctiveness need evidence, not indignation.
- Follow publication. The Industrial Property Bulletin opens the opposition window, which in current practice runs 90 days for a trade mark, before a registration certificate issues.
Our trademark registration service handles the preparation and the follow-up across all the classes at once.
What documents does the Department want?
A Nepali applicant usually needs the application form, the mark label, a notarised power of attorney, a board authority, the industry registration and a current tax clearance.
A foreign applicant files through a representative here and adds certified home-registration papers. Confirm the current list with the Department of Industry, because the paperwork changes more often than the law does.
How long does it take?
Plan in years rather than months. Our own published-mark data suggests the gap between filing and bulletin publication is often fifteen to eighteen months, and some marks take considerably longer.
Publication then opens the opposition window, and an opposed application takes longer still. Do not build a product launch around a certificate date you have been quoted.
Can an Ilam tea group protect the regional name?
Not as a geographical indication, because Nepal has no geographical indication law, register or certificate. The words "geographical" and "indication" do not appear in the Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965 at all.
Nor can the group file a collective mark or a certification mark. Those categories exist in India, the European Union and elsewhere; the Act here never uses either term, and there is no form for them.
Anyone telling a growers' association otherwise is describing another country's law. Ask to see the application form before money changes hands.
What does the Act give a group instead?
An ordinary registration, owned by one legal person. The association registers the mark in its own name, and each grower who qualifies holds written permission from it under Sec. 21D.
Sec. 16(2) makes that permission matter, because using a registered mark without a transfer or written approval is outside the law rather than merely outside the group.
The standard, the inspection and the consequence of failing it all go into the association's own agreement. Nobody at the Department will examine that document, which is precisely why it has to be good.
Can you protect the packaging as well?
A genuinely new shape or ornament can be registered as an industrial design, so a distinctive tin or caddy may be a candidate. The printed brand on it remains a trade mark question.
Nepal has no single registration covering a whole shelf appearance, so break the packaging into parts. Our industrial design service prepares the representations, and our note on packaging design explains what qualifies.
Does copyright cover a label?
Original artwork, photography and written copy are protected by copyright under the Copyright Act 2059 (2002), from the moment they are created, with no filing needed.
The risk is ownership rather than existence. Paying a designer does not transfer copyright by itself, so put a written assignment into every engagement before the work starts.
Can you use the TM or R symbol in Nepal?
The symbols carry no Nepali legal effect. The Act never uses them, and nothing turns on whether a letter appears beside your logo.
What does have an effect is the opposite claim. 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.
So the practical rule is simple. Do not put a registration symbol on a packet until the registration exists for the goods in that packet.
How do you protect an export brand?
One country at a time. Nepal is outside the Madrid System, so there is no single application that reaches India, the European Union or the United States from Kathmandu.
Nepal has been a Paris Convention member since 2001, which lets a foreign filing claim the date of your Nepali one within the allowed window. For trade marks that window is usually six months, so the export plan has to be made early.
Common mistakes
- Filing Class 30 and assuming the cafe on the ground floor is covered.
- Waiting until the brand is known, in a first-to-file country.
- Treating the company registration at the Company Registrar as brand protection.
- Putting a registration symbol on packaging before the registration exists.
- Describing a regional tea name as a geographical indication Nepal does not offer.
- Letting the roaster or the designer hold the artwork with no written assignment.
- Filing the logo, then redesigning it, and never refiling.
A worked example
Kanchan Peak Coffee roasts in Pokhara, runs a tasting room and ships online. This is an illustration, not a real case, but a realistic sequence.
It files the word mark in Class 30 first, because the packet is most of the revenue. It adds Class 43 when the tasting room gets a sign, and leaves Class 35 until the online shop sells other roasters' beans.
It registers the reusable tin as a design before showing it, signs an assignment with its illustrator, and keeps the application numbers in the same folder as the renewal dates.
What should you do in the first month?
Five things, none of which needs a lawyer to start. Getting them done early is worth more than getting them done perfectly.
In short
Count the activities, file the name in the classes that carry revenue, and add the rest as the business grows. Then keep the assignments and the dates in one place.
If you are told a regional tea or coffee name can be filed as a geographical indication or a certification mark here, it cannot. The Nepal Law Commission carries the Act, and the words are simply not in it.
A registration then runs seven years from the date of registration under Sec. 18D, renewable under Sec. 23B, so a three-class brand has three dates rather than one. Our renewal service keeps them.
For what Nepal has and has not joined internationally, the World Intellectual Property Organization keeps the current treaty lists.
People also search for
- How to register a brand in Nepal
- Protecting a packaged food brand
- How to protect a business name in Nepal
- A brand protection checklist
- Protecting product packaging design
If you are deciding between one class now and three later, that is a conversation worth having before the labels are printed. Contact our team and we will map the activities to the filings with you.
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