A cold drink almost always belongs in Class 32, the class the Department of Industry uses for bottled water, soft drinks, juice, energy drinks and beer. The exceptions matter more: six kinds of drink sit elsewhere, and the wrong class leaves a product unprotected.
Key takeaways
- The official heading is beers, non-alcoholic beverages, mineral and aerated waters, fruit juices and drink syrups.
- Beer is in Class 32, while every other alcoholic drink is in Class 33.
- De-alcoholised beer and wine stay in Class 32, because the alcohol has gone.
- Milk drinks and milk substitutes go to Class 29; coffee and tea based drinks to Class 30.
- A drink adapted for medical purposes moves to Class 5, but an ordinary isotonic drink does not.
- Nepal's bulletins hold 3,685 Class 32 entries and 5,753 in Class 33, an IP Sewa count.
- Sec. 18A(2) of the Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965 requires one application for every class.
What does trademark Class 32 cover?
The current WIPO heading reads: beers; non-alcoholic beverages; mineral and aerated waters; fruit beverages and fruit juices; syrups and preparations for making non-alcoholic beverages.
In everyday Nepali trade that means packaged water, soda, cola, nectar, energy drinks and beer, plus the syrups used to make them.
The class covers the goods, not the shop or the delivery round. Selling other people's drinks is a service question, and our guide to goods against services explains the split.
Is a cold drink always Class 32?
No, and this is where beverage filings go wrong. Cold, fizzy and bottled have nothing to do with the class: what decides it is the base ingredient and the purpose.
Milk, coffee, cocoa, tea and a medical adaptation each pull a drink into a different class, although the customer takes it from the same chiller.
Work down the questions in order. The first one that answers "yes" is your class.
What else does WIPO put inside Class 32?
The explanatory note is more generous than the heading suggests, expressly including de-alcoholised beverages, soft drinks, and rice-based or soya-based drinks that are not milk substitutes.
It also names energy drinks, isotonic beverages and protein-enriched sports drinks, with non-alcoholic essences and extracts for making beverages.
Those named items are the safest wording available, because an examiner recognises the phrase from the same list.
Which drinks leave Class 32, and where do they go?
WIPO publishes the exclusions alongside the class, and they are the most useful part of the entry, because each names the class that catches the item.
| Product | Class | Why it moves |
|---|---|---|
| Wine, whisky, rum, any alcohol but beer | 33 | Class 33 is all alcohol except beers |
| De-alcoholised beer or wine | 32 | Named in the Class 32 inclusions |
| Milk drinks and milk shakes | 29 | The milk base controls the class |
| Almond, coconut or soya milk substitutes | 29 | Classified as milk substitutes |
| Bottled iced tea and canned coffee | 30 | Drinks with a coffee or tea base |
| Flavourings for beverages | 30 | Grouped with food auxiliaries |
| Lemon or tomato juice for cooking | 29 | A culinary ingredient, not a drink |
| Drinks adapted for medical purposes | 5 | The medical adaptation moves it |
| Drinks for pets or livestock | 31 | Animal beverages sit with feed |
| Soda water sold as a mixer | 32 | A non-alcoholic mixer stays put |
Check every product against this list before settling a specification, and use the NICE class finder for anything it misses.
Why is beer in Class 32 and not Class 33?
Because the classification splits drinks by how they are made and sold rather than by alcohol content, and beer has always sat with the bottled refreshment goods.
Class 33 reads "alcoholic beverages, except beers", an unusual heading precisely because it has to carve beer out of itself.
A Nepali brewery that also bottles spirits therefore needs two applications, because Sec. 18A(2) makes one class one application with no combined filing available.
What about alcohol-free beer and cocktail mixers?
Both stay in Class 32, and both surprise people: WIPO lists de-alcoholised beverages inside Class 32, and Class 33 expressly excludes them.
Class 33 also excludes non-alcoholic mixers used to make alcoholic drinks, naming soda water, so a tonic sold only to bars is still Class 32.
A zero-alcohol line launched beside a beer therefore shares its class, one of the few times a beverage portfolio gets simpler rather than wider.
Where do milk-based drinks go?
Class 29. WIPO's note keeps milk beverages with milk predominating, and milk shakes, inside the dairy class rather than the drinks one.
Milk substitutes follow, so almond, coconut, rice and soya milk are Class 29 goods although plant based and sold chilled.
The fine line is a rice-based or soya-based drink not sold as a milk substitute, which WIPO puts back in Class 32, so describe the product carefully.
Where do bottled tea and coffee drinks go?
Class 30, with the coffee and tea goods, because a drink with a coffee, cocoa, chocolate or tea base is classified by that base rather than by its bottle.
That catches many Nepali launches, because bottled iced tea and canned coffee look like soft drinks and share a fridge with them.
Flavourings for beverages are also Class 30, while non-alcoholic essences and fruit extracts for making beverages are Class 32. Read your own product description twice.
When does a drink become a Class 5 product?
When it is adapted for medical or veterinary purposes: Class 5 covers dietetic food and beverages adapted for medical use, and Class 32 excludes them.
The boundary is drawn tightly in your favour. Class 5's own note says dietetic drinks not specified as medical belong in the ordinary food and drink classes, naming isotonic beverages as Class 32.
So an ordinary electrolyte drink is Class 32, while an oral rehydration product presented for treatment is a Class 5 question. Our guide to Class 5 in Nepal covers that side.
How busy is Class 32 in Nepal?
Busy, but not the busiest. Across the 122 Industrial Property Bulletin issues we index, 3,685 published entries sit in Class 32, the sixth most used of the 45.
Class 33 is larger, with 5,753 entries, so Nepal's published register carries noticeably more alcoholic-drink marks than non-alcoholic ones. Class 30, the tea and spices class, leads everything with 10,728.
Class 32 filings in our data run from 1995 to 2026. These are IP Sewa counts of published entries, not official statistics, and show no registration status.
How do you file a Class 32 trademark in Nepal?
Through the Department of Industry, one class at a time, and before the labels are printed.
- Fix the mark. Decide whether you protect the word, the label artwork or both, remembering that what can be trademarked is narrow.
- List the actual goods. Write "bottled drinking water, fruit juices, energy drinks" rather than the whole heading.
- Test each product against the exits. Milk, tea, coffee and medical drinks leave Class 32.
- Search the class. Run the name through the conflict checker and browse marks by class.
- Search the goods wording too. The goods and services search finds marks claiming what you claim in another class.
- File one application per class. Sec. 18A(2) allows nothing else.
- Answer the examination. The Department may query distinctiveness, conflict or your goods wording before accepting the mark.
What documents does a Class 32 filing need?
A Nepali applicant supplies the prescribed application, a clean representation of the mark, and corporate papers showing ownership, such as a board resolution.
A foreign applicant files through a Nepal-based representative appointed by power of attorney, because Sec. 21B says a mark registered abroad has no force here unless registered in Nepal.
A Paris Convention priority claim needs the certified earlier filing, and Sec. 21C lets the Department register a foreign-registered mark without enquiries if the foreign certificate is enclosed.
How long does a Class 32 registration take, and how long does it last?
An unopposed trademark in Nepal commonly runs about 12 to 14 months end to end, and 6 to 8 months in the smoothest cases, but treat both as typical rather than promised.
Sec. 21A has the Department publish accepted marks in the Industrial Property Bulletin, and practice allows an opposition window of 90 days from publication, although the Act's bare text says 35. Sec. 16 ties title to registration, and the registration certificate follows if nothing succeeds.
Sec. 18D then gives seven years from registration, and the renewal term under Sec. 23B may be repeated any number of times for a mark. Our renewal service tracks the dates for you.
What must you do after registration?
Use the mark. Sec. 18C lets the Department cancel a registration, after inquiry, if the mark is not brought into use within one year of registration.
For a beverage brand that is rarely a problem, but it bites a company that files a defensive name for a product it never launches.
Sec. 18B also prohibits presenting a mark as registered before it is, and Sec. 19 backs that with a fine and confiscation of the goods, so keep the symbol off the label until the certificate exists.
Can one application cover several drink classes?
No. Sec. 18A governs classification, and Sec. 18A(2) requires a separate application for goods in different categories, so a range spanning Classes 29, 30, 32 and 33 is four filings.
Sec. 18A(3) softens it: a mark registered in one category may be registered in another if it falls there, so you can extend later rather than file everything at once.
Nepal is first-to-file in practice, so the order you file in matters. Start with the class that carries your main product, and read how to choose the right class before you commit.
Common mistakes
- Filing Class 32 for a milk shake. The milk base sends it to Class 29 instead.
- Assuming beer needs Class 33. It is the one alcoholic drink that does not.
- Copying the whole heading. List the drinks you actually sell, in plain words.
- Treating a company name as protection. A Company Registrar entry is not a trademark.
- Searching only the exact spelling. Beverage names collide on sound more than spelling.
- Printing labels before filing. Under first-to-file, the later application loses.
A worked example
This is an illustration, not a real case. A Chitwan producer launches "Machhapuchhre Fresh" across bottled water, lemon soda, bottled iced tea and a sweet lassi.
The water and soda are Class 32. The iced tea is Class 30 because of its tea base, and the lassi is Class 29 because milk predominates.
One brand, three classes, three applications under Sec. 18A(2), because filing only Class 32 would leave two of its four products with no registered protection.
A malt beer next year rejoins Class 32, and a wine would need Class 33. Before any of it, search what is published with IP Sewa's trademark search.
What can a class number not settle?
Whether the name is distinctive enough, whether somebody already uses it, and whether the mark survives an opposition. Class 32 only describes the goods.
Two beverage marks in one class can be far apart commercially, and a well-known brand from another class can still block you, so read the goods wording in the entry.
For a considered view before you print anything, our clearance service weighs the name, the goods and the similarity together, and the NICE Classification guide covers the wider system.
In short
Class 32 is the cold-drink class: water, soda, juice, energy drinks, syrups and beer, plus alcohol-free versions of Class 33 drinks.
Everything else that arrives cold sits elsewhere for a reason, and the reason is always the base ingredient or a medical purpose. Check each product, then count your applications.
The classification is published by WIPO and the Act by the Nepal Law Commission, while the Department of Industry decides every application.
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Send us your product list and we will say how many classes it needs and whether the name is clear. Start with trademark registration, or put the range to us through contact before the bottles are ordered.
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