Protect a handicraft or pashmina brand in Nepal by filing the name and logo as trade marks at the Department of Industry, then covering the rest with design registration, copyright and written contracts. One filing never covers a craft business, because its value sits in four different places.
Key takeaways
- A trade mark protects the name and logo, not the weave, the motif or the photograph.
- Nepal is first-to-file, so the earliest complete application usually wins the argument.
- One application covers one class, so fabric and finished clothing are two filings.
- An industrial design registration is the tool for a genuinely new product shape or pattern.
- Nepal has no collective or certification mark, so a shared label needs one owner plus contracts.
- Copyright in a design you paid for does not move to you without a written assignment.
- Nepal is outside the Madrid System, so an export brand needs a filing in each market.
What actually needs protecting in a craft business?
Four things, and they are not interchangeable. The name customers ask for, the appearance of the product itself, the artwork and photographs in your catalogue, and the relationships that let other people make or sell for you.
A copy can attack any one of them. Someone can take the name, the pattern, the lookbook image, or your workshop's methods, and each theft is answered by a different right.
Which right covers which asset?
Match the asset to the right before you spend anything. Most wasted filings come from expecting a trade mark to protect something it was never designed to hold.
Why does the name come first?
Because Nepal is a first-to-file country. The Department does not hand you a mark because you used it earliest; it hands it to whoever filed a complete application first.
Years of market stalls, export invoices and a busy Instagram account build goodwill, and goodwill is useful evidence. It is not a registration, and it will not stop a stranger's application by itself.
Search before you print. Our Nepal trade mark search shows what has already been published, and the conflict checker flags near misses on spelling.
Who should be named as the owner?
Whoever actually controls the brand, named exactly as in the business records. That is an individual, a partnership, a company or a cooperative, and the choice is hard to undo.
Do not register a cooperative's shared name in one founder's personal name because that person handles the paperwork. It is the most common ownership dispute in small Nepali brands.
Check who already holds similar marks while you are deciding, using our owner and applicant search.
What if several weavers share one label?
Nepal has no collective mark and no certification mark. Those categories exist in India, the European Union and elsewhere, but the Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965 never uses either term.
So a shared label is an ordinary registration in one legal person's name, with every other user holding written permission from that owner under Sec. 21D. The standard, the inspection and the sanction go in a members' agreement the group writes itself.
That is a real route, not a consolation prize, but it puts the drafting on you. Our note on origin claims for Nepali tea and pashmina covers the same ground for a regional name.
Which classes does pashmina sit in?
By the goods you actually sell, not by the industry you belong to. Class 24 is textiles, Class 25 is clothing, Class 27 is carpets and floor coverings, and Class 35 is retail service.
| What you sell | Likely class | The question to answer first |
|---|---|---|
| Fabric sold by length | 24 | Is it sold as cloth rather than as a finished item? |
| Shawls, scarves and clothing | 25 | Is the customer buying it to wear? |
| Carpets, rugs and mats | 27 | Is it a floor or wall covering? |
| Wooden or wicker articles | 20 | Is the object itself the product? |
| Ceramics and household ware | 21 | Is it a vessel or a utensil? |
| A shop or an online store | 35 | Do you want the selling service protected too? |
Write the goods precisely. "Handicrafts" is too broad to guide an examiner, and claiming products you do not sell invites trouble later. Test the wording with our NICE class finder.
Why might one brand need two applications?
Because a Nepali application covers one class at a time. A pashmina house selling both fabric and finished shawls is looking at Class 24 and Class 25, which is two filings for one logo.
You can see the rule at work in the published register, where one Kathmandu trade body filed the same device twice on the same day to cover both classes. The arithmetic is worth doing before the budget is set.
How do you file at the Department?
- Fix the mark. Decide whether you are filing the words, the logo, or both as separate applications.
- Search. Check identical and similar marks in the classes that matter to you.
- Choose the classes. Separate the goods from the retail service, and count the filings.
- Prepare the papers. The application, the mark label and a notarised power of attorney if an agent signs.
- Answer the examiner. Expect questions on similarity and distinctiveness, and answer them with evidence.
- Watch the bulletin. Publication in the Industrial Property Bulletin opens the opposition window, which in current practice runs 90 days for a trade mark, before a registration certificate can issue.
Our trademark registration service runs this end to end, including the responses that decide borderline applications.
What documents will the Department expect?
A Nepali applicant usually assembles the application form, the mark label, a notarised power of attorney, a board or committee authority, the industry registration and a current tax clearance.
A foreign applicant files through a representative in Nepal and adds certified home-registration papers, plus a priority document where a Paris Convention claim is made. Confirm the current list with the Department of Industry before signing anything.
How long does it take in practice?
Longer than most guides say. Our own published-mark data suggests the gap between filing and bulletin publication is often fifteen to eighteen months, and some marks take longer still.
Publication is not the finish line either, because the opposition window runs from it. Treat any timeline you are quoted as a typical case rather than a promise.
Can a woven motif be protected?
Sometimes, and rarely by a trade mark. A motif that is genuinely new as applied to a product may be registrable as an industrial design; a motif already common in Nepali weaving usually is not.
Novelty is judged against what already exists, so publishing the pattern before you file can be the thing that destroys the claim. Keep dated sketches and file before the trade fair.
When is industrial design the right tool?
When the value sits in how the product looks rather than in what it is called. A distinctive bag shape, a fringe treatment or a repeating border can all be candidates.
The registration is made at the same Department, with representations that must show exactly what you are claiming. Our industrial design service prepares those drawings.
What does copyright cover in a craft business?
Original creative work: the catalogue photograph, the hand-drawn motif, the thangka, the website copy. It arises when the work is made, under the Copyright Act 2059, without any filing.
Registration is voluntary and mainly evidential. Keep dated source files and drafts, because proving when you made something is usually the hard part.
Who owns a design you paid for?
Often the designer, unless a written agreement says otherwise. Paying an invoice is not the same as taking the copyright, and the gap surfaces exactly when the relationship ends.
Put an assignment in every design, photography and agency engagement. It costs a paragraph now and a rebrand later.
What does a trade mark not do?
It does not give you the word "pashmina". Descriptive words for the material itself stay available to everyone, and an examiner will say so.
It also does not police the market for you. A registration is a right you enforce, and nothing happens until somebody notices the copy and acts on it.
Our opposition and enforcement service handles both the objection during the opposition window and the letter afterwards.
How do you protect a brand you export?
Country by country. Nepal is outside the Madrid System, so there is no single filing that reaches your export markets from Kathmandu.
Nepal has been a Paris Convention member since 2001, which lets a later foreign filing claim the date of your Nepali one within the allowed window. Six months is the usual window for a trade mark, so plan the export filings alongside the local one.
What about a buyer registering your name abroad?
It happens, and it is usually a distributor rather than a pirate. Someone registers the brand locally "for convenience", and then owns it.
Say in the distribution agreement who may register what, and check the destination register before you ship. Our guide to IP for Nepali exporters sets out the wider checklist.
The same applies to the domain and the social handles, which our note on locking down a brand online covers.
Common mistakes
- Filing after the launch, in a first-to-file country, and hoping goodwill will be enough.
- Registering the company at the Company Registrar and assuming that is the brand protected.
- Filing one class for a business that sells fabric, garments and retail service.
- Showing a new pattern at a trade fair and filing the design afterwards.
- Paying a designer with no written assignment of copyright.
- Calling a shared producer label a certification mark, which Nepali law does not recognise.
- Changing the logo after filing, so the registration protects a version nobody sees.
A worked example
Himal Loom House weaves shawls in Lalitpur, sells fabric by the metre, and runs one showroom. This is an illustration, not a real case.
It files the wordmark and the logo in Class 25 for the shawls, adds Class 24 for the fabric, and leaves Class 35 until the showroom becomes a chain. It registers its new border pattern as a design before the autumn fair.
It signs an assignment with its photographer, and keeps every dated sketch in one folder. None of that is expensive; all of it is the difference between owning a brand and hoping.
What should you keep in a file?
Proof, in the boring sense. Evidence wins arguments about ownership far more often than legal cleverness does.
How long does protection last?
A registered trade mark runs seven years from registration under Sec. 18D, and Sec. 23B sets out the renewal. Our renewal service tracks the dates for clients.
An industrial design registration runs for a shorter fixed term and is also renewable, and copyright lasts far longer without any filing. Check the current design term with the Department before you rely on a date.
In short
File the name first, count the classes honestly, and use design and copyright for what the trade mark cannot hold. Then keep the paperwork that proves all of it is yours.
If several makers share a label, accept that Nepal gives you one owner and a contract, and write the contract properly. The Nepal Law Commission carries the Act if you want to read the wording yourself.
For which treaties Nepal has and has not joined, the World Intellectual Property Organization keeps the current lists.
People also search for
- How to register a brand in Nepal
- How to protect a business name in Nepal
- Protecting product packaging design
- Protecting a clothing or fashion brand
- A brand protection checklist
If you are weighing a filing against a launch date, the search is the step to do this week. Contact our team and we will look at the name, the classes and the design timing together.
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