Trademark Class 43 in Nepal — Restaurants, Cafés & Hotels (What It Covers, Full List & How to File)

NICE Class 43 covers services for providing food and drink, and temporary accommodation. Restaurants, cafes, bars, catering firms, hotels, lodges and homestays protect their brand in this class. In Nepal you file a Class 43 application at the Department of Industry, one class per application.

Key takeaways

• The official Class 43 heading is short: services for providing food and drink; temporary accommodation.
• Serving food or drink is Class 43. The packaged product you sell in shops is a goods class, usually 29 to 33.
• Running a hotel for guests is Class 43. Managing a hotel business for its owner is Class 35.
• Nepal's published bulletin record holds about 1,540 Class 43 marks from roughly 880 different applicant names.
• Class 43 is the second-busiest service class in that record, behind Class 35.
• Nepal is first-to-file, one application per class, and a registration runs 7 years and can be renewed.

What does trademark Class 43 cover?

The heading is two short phrases: services for providing food and drink, and temporary accommodation. Everything in the class hangs off one of those two ideas. You are either feeding someone or putting them up for a short stay.

That is why a cafe, a trekking lodge, a wedding caterer and a campground all sit in the same class even though they look like different businesses. What they share is that the customer buys a service in the moment, not a product to take home. The full alphabetical list is published by WIPO, which maintains the Nice Classification that Nepal uses.

What sits inside Class 43 in practice?

These are the service descriptions Nepali hospitality businesses use most often. Write the ones that match what you actually sell, in plain words:

• Restaurant services, self-service restaurant services, take-away restaurant services, snack-bar services
• Cafe services, cafeteria services, canteen services, bar services
• Food and drink catering and personal chef services
• Hotel services, motel services, boarding house services, tourist home services
• Temporary accommodation, rental of holiday accommodation, providing campground facilities, holiday camp services
• Hotel reservations, temporary accommodation reservations, reception services for temporary accommodation
• Rental of chairs, tables, table linen and glassware for an event

A homestay, a trekking lodge and a guesthouse are not separate Nice terms. They are all forms of temporary accommodation, so they belong in Class 43 whatever the local name for them is.

What is not in Class 43?

Class 43 is narrower than the word "hospitality" suggests. These close neighbours belong somewhere else:

One rule handles most cases. Ask who is being served and with what. If a guest eats, drinks or sleeps on your premises, it is Class 43. If the thing changing hands is a packaged product, a management service or a ticket, it is not.

How many Class 43 trademarks does Nepal's record hold?

We extract every entry from every Industrial Property Bulletin the Department of Industry publishes. Across that record there are about 1,540 Class 43 marks, filed under roughly 880 different applicant names. Those figures describe marks published in the bulletin, which is not the same thing as marks currently on the register.

Two details are worth knowing before you file. First, Class 43 is the second-busiest service class in the record, behind only Class 35 for retail and advertising, so a hospitality name has more competition than most service brands. Second, about three in four Class 43 entries carry a logo rather than plain words, which tells you how much of this market is fought over visually. You can see the live picture yourself with search by Nice class.

Who files in Class 43 in Nepal?

Restaurants, cafes and bars form the largest group, followed by hotels, resorts and guesthouses. Catering companies, momo and fast-food chains, trekking lodges, homestays and campground operators all belong here too.

The pattern in the record is that the well-known Kathmandu and Pokhara venues file, and smaller district businesses often do not until someone copies them. Because Nepal is first-to-file, the copy can sometimes be filed first. Years of trading under a name does not, on its own, defeat an earlier application.

The geography is also less obvious than you would guess. Kaski district, which contains Pokhara and much of Nepal's trekking trade, accounts for only about 75 of the Class 43 entries in the record. Tourism volume and trademark filing are not the same curve: a town can be full of busy lodges whose names nobody has ever applied to protect.

Do you need more than one class?

Often, yes. Nepal requires a separate application for each Nice class under Sec. 18A of the Patent, Design and Trademark Act 1965, with its own fee. So the question is not "which one class am I", it is "how many parts does my business have".

A cafe that only serves customers needs Class 43 alone. A cafe that also sells its own roasted coffee in supermarkets needs Class 43 and Class 30. A hotel that also runs a conference business may need Class 43 and Class 41. Map the business first, then file.

Plans matter as much as current sales. If you intend to franchise the venue, license the name to a second operator, or put the brand on bottled water and takeaway boxes, those uses are easier to defend when the classes were filed at the start. Adding a class later is possible, but the later filing date is the one you get, and Nepal gives weight to whoever filed first. The Nice class finder is a quick way to test your own descriptions, and goods versus services classification explains the split in more depth.

How do you register a Class 43 trademark in Nepal?

The route is the same as any other class. Only the specification changes.

1. Search first. Look for earlier restaurant and hotel names that sound or look like yours. Start with the published trademark records, then widen to spelling variants and translations.
2. Confirm the class. Check that you are really selling a service and not a product, and note any second class you need.
3. Write the specification. "Restaurant services; cafe services; catering" is far stronger than "hospitality". Vague wording invites objections and is harder to enforce.
4. Prepare the papers. A Nepali company usually needs the application form, a clear label of the mark, a notarised power of attorney, a board resolution, its industry certificate and its latest tax clearance, which a newly formed company will not have yet. Confirm the current list with the Department of Industry.
5. File and answer the examiner. The Department examines the mark for conflicts and distinctiveness and may raise a query.
6. Publication and opposition. An accepted mark is published in the Industrial Property Bulletin. A published trademark can be opposed within 90 days of publication; the deadline the Department states prevails, so act before the last day.
7. Certificate and renewal. If nothing blocks it, the mark is registered for 7 years under Sec. 18D and can be renewed in further 7-year terms.

Unopposed applications commonly take around 12 to 14 months end to end, and only the smoothest cases move faster. Our trademark registration service handles this from search to certificate.

Common mistakes in Class 43 filings

• Filing the venue but not the product. The restaurant name is protected in Class 43 while the bottled sauce with the same name sits unprotected in Class 30.
• Writing "hospitality services". That is not a Nice term. An examiner will ask what you actually do, and a broad phrase gives you weaker ground in a dispute.
• Filing in the founder's personal name when the company owns the brand. Transfers and enforcement both get harder later.
• Filing a logo only when the name is what customers say out loud. A device registration does not always cover the plain word.
• Searching only the exact spelling. Sound-alikes and Devanagari variants are the ones that cause refusals. The conflict checker screens more widely.
• Waiting until the second branch opens. By then the name is public, and first-to-file rewards whoever lodged the earlier application.

What does a mixed hospitality brand look like?

Here is an illustration, not a real case. A Lakeside cafe called Machhapuchhre Roast serves coffee and meals, sells its own roasted beans in packets, and rents the upstairs floor to trekkers by the night.

The cafe service and the rooms both sit in Class 43, so one application covers them if the specification names both. The packet of beans does not: that is Class 30, and it needs its own application. If the owner files only Class 43 and the beans sell well, a competitor can file the same name for coffee products and the owner has no straightforward answer. Deciding this before launch costs far less than fixing it after.

In short

Class 43 is the class for serving food and drink and for temporary accommodation. Its edges matter more than its centre: the packaged product is a goods class, hotel management for an owner is Class 35, and travel booking is Class 39. Nepal's published record holds about 1,540 Class 43 marks, so search before you commit to a name, write a precise specification, and file early.

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Not sure whether your menu, your rooms and your packaged products need one class or three? Send us what you sell and we will map the classes before you file. This article is general information, not legal advice.