Requesting a Duplicate Registration Certificate in Nepal

A duplicate certificate is provided for by name in Nepal's own statute. Sec. 24 of the Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965 says that where a registration certificate is lost, a copy may be obtained from the Department of Industry on payment of a prescribed fee.

Key takeaways

• The provision is Sec. 24, headed "Copy of Certificate", and it covers patents, designs and trade marks alike.
• The word the Act uses is lost. Damage, theft and destruction are not separately named.
• Schedule 3 carries a dedicated line, "Fees for the copy of the registration certificate", with a column for each of the three rights.
• The Act prescribes a fee but no form for this request, unlike an application or a renewal.
• A copy replaces paper, not rights. Your title comes from the register under Sec. 16.
• A copy does nothing for your renewal term, which runs on its own clock under Sec. 23B.
• Rates are not fixed forever: Sec. 26A lets the Government alter Schedule 3 by a Nepal Gazette notification.

Does Nepal's Act actually provide for a duplicate certificate?

Yes, and that is worth saying plainly, because a great deal of writing on this subject describes an invented procedure instead. The statute addresses the situation in one short section near the end of its miscellaneous chapter.

Sec. 24 is headed "Copy of Certificate", and it is the only place in the Act that deals with a registration certificate going missing. It was touched by the 1987 first amendment, which is where the reference to a prescribed fee comes from.

It sits between Sec. 23B on renewal and Sec. 25 on compensation, and reading the three together shows what a replacement document is not meant to fix.

What does Sec. 24 say, in plain words?

It says that where the certificate of registration of any patent, design or trade mark is lost, a copy of it may be obtained from the Department of Industry on payment of the prescribed fee.

Three things follow from that single sentence. The right covered is all three registered rights, the office is the Department, and the document you receive is described as a copy rather than a fresh grant.

Notice what the sentence does not contain: no waiting period, no publication step, no examination and no window in which anyone else may object.

Why is the register, not the paper, your actual right?

Because Sec. 16 gives title to a trade mark on registration, and Sec. 22 requires the Department of Industry to maintain a register of patents, designs and trade marks showing registration or cancellation.

The certificate evidences what that register already records. Losing it is an inconvenience for banks, buyers, distributors and customs paperwork, and it is not a loss of the underlying right itself.

That matters practically. People sometimes panic and file a fresh application for a mark they already own, which is the one response that creates a problem rather than solving one.

Why does the word "lost" in the section matter?

Because it is the only trigger the statute names. Sec. 24 speaks of a certificate that is lost, and it does not separately mention one that is torn, water-damaged, burnt or taken.

Those situations end the same way in practice: you cannot produce the original. Whether the Department of Industry treats a mutilated certificate exactly as a missing one is an administrative question, not a statutory one.

So describe the situation accurately, keep what remains of the original, and ask the Department how it wants damage handled rather than guessing at a rule the Act never states.

Who may ask for a copy of the certificate?

The person the register records as holder of the patent, design or trade mark, which is why an assignment recorded late causes trouble at exactly this point.

Sec. 20 allows a person to appoint an attorney or a legal practitioner to take any action required under the Act, and it treats the representative's actions as the holder's own. That is the provision an agent relies on.

A foreign holder normally works through a Nepal-based representative appointed by a power of attorney, because Nepal sits outside the Madrid System and every dealing with the register happens here in the ordinary national way.

Does the Act prescribe a form for this request?

It does not, and the contrast with the rest of the statute is deliberate enough to be useful. Schedule 1 carries the application forms, Schedule 2 carries the certificate and renewal forms, and Schedule 3 carries the fees.

Sec. 24 points only at the fee. There is no Schedule 1 or Schedule 2 form headed "copy of certificate", which means the practical shape of the request is set by the Department rather than by the statute.

Ask the Department of Industry what it currently wants before drafting anything, because a counter answers that in a minute and a confident website guess cannot.

What should you gather before you approach the Department?

Everything that identifies the registration precisely, and nothing that invents a procedure. The aim is to let staff find one entry in the register without ambiguity.

1. The registration number and the registration date. These are the two identifiers the register itself is organised around, and they matter more than the brand name.
2. The holder's name exactly as it appears on the record. A later trading name or a rebranded company name will not match, and a mismatch is the most common reason a request stalls.
3. The class the mark is registered in. Nepal applies the NICE classification, and Sec. 18A(2) requires a separate application for each category, so one brand may sit on several separate entries.
4. A plain account of what happened to the original. Say who held it, where it was kept and when it was last seen, in a few honest sentences.
5. Whatever survives of the old certificate. If it is damaged rather than gone, take the remains with you rather than discarding them.
6. Authority to act, if you are not the holder. A power of attorney for an agent, and the company's own authorisation where the holder is a company.

What does the fee table say about a certificate copy?

Schedule 3 to the Act is a numbered fee table with one column each for patents, designs and trade marks. Item eight on that table reads "Fees for the copy of the registration certificate", and it carries a figure in all three columns.

That is worth knowing before you walk in, because it makes the request a recognised, priced service rather than a favour. We do not publish amounts, since a fee quoted online ages badly.

A separate line, item five, covers endorsement fees for an amendment on record and for certification other than transfer. That one is about changing or certifying the record, which is a different errand from replacing a certificate.

Every one of those lines has a separate column for patents, designs and trade marks, and Sec. 26A allows the amounts to be altered by notification, so treat the table as a map of the services rather than a price list.

Can the fee change without the Act changing?

Yes. Sec. 26A gives the Government of Nepal power to alter the amounts in Schedule 3 by a notification in the Nepal Gazette, which is how a fee table written decades ago is kept current.

So any figure you read in an article, including one written by a law firm, is a snapshot, and only the Department of Industry can confirm what applies on the day you file.

If cost is part of your decision, tell us what you hold and we will tell you what the current position looks like. That conversation belongs on our contact page rather than in a blog post.

Does a duplicate certificate affect your renewal term?

Not at all. The two clocks are independent, and a lost document has no effect whatever on when your protection ends.

A registered trade mark runs for seven years from registration under Sec. 18D, and Sec. 23B requires renewal within thirty-five days of expiry, with a further six-month window available on payment of a fine. A trade mark is renewable any number of times in seven-year terms.

Our renewal date calculator will place those dates for you, and the renewal service handles the filing itself if you would rather not track it in a spreadsheet.

What if the registration has already lapsed?

Then deal with the lapse first. Sec. 23B provides that where a registration is not renewed within the late window, the registration of the patent, design or trade mark is automatically cancelled.

A cancelled entry has no live certificate behind it, so there is nothing for Sec. 24 to copy and the conversation turns to renewal instead.

Check the position before you spend anything. Our application number lookup and the published trademark search both show what appears in the Department's published bulletins, which is a useful starting point even though neither shows live registration status.

What if the holder on the register is no longer the owner?

Then the record needs fixing before a replacement certificate in the new name makes any sense. A copy issued under Sec. 24 reproduces what the register says, and the register says whatever was last recorded.

Sec. 21D governs the transfer of ownership of a patent, design or trade mark, and it also covers written approval for someone else to use it. Schedule 3 carries a separate transfer fee line for exactly that step.

Businesses hit this after a merger, a family settlement or a restructuring nobody told the Department about. The certificate is where the problem surfaces, rarely where it started.

Does any of this work for patents and industrial designs?

Yes, and that is one of the tidier features of a single statute covering three rights. Sec. 24 names patents, designs and trade marks together, and Schedule 3 prices the certificate copy in all three columns.

The surrounding terms differ. A patent runs seven years from registration under Sec. 8 and may be renewed not more than twice under Sec. 23B, and a design runs in five-year terms that may likewise be renewed not more than twice.

A patent holder and a design holder therefore face the same replacement route with different renewal arithmetic behind it. See patent registration and industrial design.

How long should you expect a replacement to take?

We cannot give you a number, and nor can anyone who has not asked the Department this month, because the Act sets no period and no service standard is published.

What we can say is what it does not involve. There is no examination, no publication in the Industrial Property Bulletin and no opposition window, so none of the long stages of an original application apply.

Timing depends on how cleanly your details match the register and how busy the office is, so if the wait matters commercially, say so when you ask.

A worked example

This is an illustration, not a real case. A Biratnagar snack maker registered a word mark in the packaged-food class in 2019, a class you can look up here, and kept the certificate in a cabinet that flooded last monsoon.

A distributor now wants proof of registration before signing. The maker has the registration number on an old renewal reminder, and the recorded company name still matches.

The right sequence is short. Confirm the entry is still live, check whether the seven-year term has run since 2019, then ask the Department of Industry for a copy under Sec. 24 and take the damaged original along.

The wrong sequence is also short, and expensive. A fresh application would create a second, later entry for a mark the business already owns, and would answer the distributor months later.

Common mistakes

• Filing a new application instead. Nepal is first-to-file, and a duplicate entry for your own mark helps nobody.
• Quoting the application number as the registration number. They are different identifiers and the register is organised by the second one.
• Using today's trading name. The register holds the name recorded at the time, not the name on your current signboard.
• Throwing away a damaged certificate. Torn paper is evidence, and disposing of it removes the easiest thing you had.
• Expecting the copy to fix an expired term. Renewal under Sec. 23B is a separate request with its own deadline.
• Waiting for a bank or a dispute to force the issue. The request is far easier when nothing urgent is riding on it.

Where should you read the source text yourself?

The Act is published by the Nepal Law Commission, and Sec. 24 takes under a minute to read, which is the fastest cure for the invented procedures circulating online.

The office that applies it is the Department of Industry, and its own counter is the only current source for forms, fees and practice. International context for the classification sits with WIPO.

This page is general information, not legal advice, and anything turning on a disputed ownership record deserves an advocate rather than an article.

In short

The answer to "can I get a duplicate certificate in Nepal" is in the statute, not in guesswork. Sec. 24 provides for a copy where the original is lost, and Schedule 3 carries a fee line for it.

Your right never depended on the paper. It depends on the register the Department of Industry maintains under Sec. 22, and on keeping the registration alive.

So confirm the entry, match the details exactly, take what remains of the original, and ask the Department what it wants today. The rest is inference.

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If you are not sure whether your registration is still live, whether the recorded holder still matches your company, or which of the four errands above you actually need, send us the details. We can look at the published record, tell you what the register appears to show and help with registration or a related filing. Start on our contact page.