Trademark Registration for Salons & Spas in Nepal

Three separate offices are involved, and none checks the others. The business is registered as a company or a firm, the tax office issues the PAN or VAT number, and only the Department of Industry registers the name as a trade mark. Most salons do the first two and skip the third.

Key takeaways

• Registering the business is not registering the brand. A file at the Office of the Company Registrar records an entity, not a name others must avoid.
• The two registers touch once: the Department's trade mark checklist asks for the business permit and PAN or VAT evidence, so do the business route first.
• Salon and spa services are Class 44, whose heading covers hygienic and beauty care for human beings or animals.
• Your own shampoo or oil is Class 3, a medicated preparation is Class 5, and a gym on the premises is Class 41 — each a separate application under Sec. 18A(2).
• Class 44 is thinly used here while Class 3 is one of the busiest, so the product filing is the harder clearance.
• Sec. 21D lets you permit branches or franchisees to use the mark in writing, which is how a second outlet is handled.
• A registration runs seven years under Sec. 18D and is renewable under Section 23B, but Sec. 18C cancels a mark unused a year after registration.

Which office actually registers a beauty parlour?

It depends what you are registering. If the salon is a private limited company, the entity is created at the Office of the Company Registrar. If it is a sole proprietorship or a partnership firm, registration goes through the firm route instead.

Which firm route applies varies with the size and type of business, so confirm it locally. A tax registration then follows at the Inland Revenue Department, which issues the PAN and, above the relevant threshold, VAT.

Neither of those is a brand right. The name over the door becomes a registered trade mark only at the Department of Industry, and that is a separate application nobody prompts you to make.

Does registering the business protect the name?

No, and this is the misunderstanding that costs salons the most. A company registration stops two companies sharing one legal identity. It says nothing about who may put that word on a shopfront.

Sec. 16(1) of the Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965 gives title to a trade mark on registration at the Department, and nowhere else. Nepal is first-to-file in practice, so the salon that opened first is not the one with the right.

The result is ordinary and avoidable. A parlour trades for six years under a name it never filed, a chain registers the same word, and the older business is the one that has to change its signboard.

Where do the business and brand registers touch?

Once, at the counter. The Department's own trade mark checklist asks a domestic applicant for the business permit and evidence of PAN or VAT, as of our last check, so the business route has to be finished before the mark can be filed.

That is the only connection. The Department does not tell the Registrar what it has registered, and the Registrar does not warn you that your name is somebody's mark.

So the sequence is business first, brand second, and a search before either. Our guide to the documents a filing needs lists what the Department expects.

Which class covers a salon or a spa?

Class 44 of the NICE classification, which the Department applies under Section 18A(1) by notification in the Nepal Gazette. Its heading reads: medical services; veterinary services; hygienic and beauty care for human beings or animals; agriculture, aquaculture, horticulture and forestry services.

WIPO's alphabetical list is more direct, carrying beauty salon services at basic number 440020, hairdressing at 440034, massage at 440086, health spa services at 440202, hair dyeing services at 440242 and tattooing at 440197.

Write the description from those words rather than from your price list. The NICE class finder will confirm the category, and the AI classifier will check unusual wording.

What does Class 44 leave out?

Everything you sell rather than do. A salon's own shampoo, oil or cream is a product, and non-medicated cosmetics and toiletry preparations are Class 3. A medicated preparation moves again, to Class 5.

Training is Class 41, and so is something most owners miss: WIPO's Class 44 exclusions send health clubs for physical exercise there too. A spa that adds a gym has added a category.

Selling other brands' products over the counter is Class 35, because retail is the bringing together of goods for customers to view and buy. The difference between doing and selling is set out in our note on goods against services.

Which class is harder to clear?

Not the one you would guess. Across our own index of published bulletin entries, Class 44 carries roughly 385 marks, which puts it 34th of the 45 categories. Class 3 carries roughly 5,005, making it one of the three busiest in Nepal.

Those are IP Sewa figures from published entries, not official Department statistics, and they exclude applications still in examination.

So your service name will usually clear Class 44 without trouble, while the same word on a bottle runs into a crowded Class 3. Plan the product filing as the hard one.

What can a salon actually register?

A distinctive word, a logo, or the two together. Sec. 2(c) defines a trade mark as a word, symbol or picture used by a firm, company or individual to distinguish its products or services from other people's.

The working word is distinguish. "City Beauty Parlour" describes the trade; an invented or unexpected word does not, and a name built only from "salon", "spa", "hair" and "beauty" is a weak badge.

File the word and the logo separately where both matter: a word filing covers the name in any typeface, a device filing only the artwork submitted. Our note on registering a logo covers the choice.

What if another salon already uses your name?

Check whether they have filed before you assume anything. An older business trading under a name it never registered has no entry on the register, and in a first-to-file system that is the position that matters.

That cuts both ways. If your own name has been unfiled for years, somebody else can register it and you are the one who has to argue. Our note on searching the register explains how to check what has been published.

How do you file the mark?

1. Search first. Run the name, its spellings and its sound-alikes through our register search and the conflict checker, in Class 44 and in any product class you plan to enter.
2. Finish the business registration and the tax registration, because the Department's checklist asks for both.
3. Write down what you do, treatment by treatment, before you choose categories.
4. Prepare the papers. Section 17(1) takes the prescribed form with four specimens of the mark, and an agent filing for you needs a notarised power of attorney.
5. File one application per category, with the same applicant named on each.
6. Answer the examiner within the deadline; an objection is a question, and a reasoned reply often settles it.
7. Watch the Industrial Property Bulletin for your own publication and for anyone filing near your name.

The full sequence is in our guide to the application process, and the reasons applications fail are collected in why applications are rejected.

How long does it take, and what happens after publication?

An unopposed application commonly runs around 12 to 14 months end to end, with 6 to 8 months only in the smoothest cases. The Department publishes no service standard, so treat both as planning estimates.

After the Bulletin carries your mark, a window opens for objections. A published trade mark can be opposed within an opposition window of 90 days from that publication.

Rely on the deadline the Department of Industry states and act before the last day. If a near-identical salon name appears, our opposition and enforcement team can advise on whether acting is worthwhile.

What about branches, franchises and chair rentals?

Put the permission in writing. Sec. 21D allows the person who registered a trade mark to permit another person to use it, and Section 16(2) cross-refers to that arrangement.

Salons run into this constantly: a second outlet opened by a cousin, a franchised branch, a stylist renting a chair and using the name on her cards. Each is somebody else using your mark.

Decide who owns the registration before the second outlet opens. The register names one proprietor, and an informal family arrangement is hard to unpick once the brand is worth something.

Do you have to use the name, and how long does it last?

Sec. 18C says that where a registered trade mark is not brought into use within one year from registration, the Department shall make the necessary inquiries and cancel the registration. A name filed for a shop that never opened is exposed.

Once registered, the term is seven years from registration under Sec. 18D, and a trade mark may be renewed any number of times under Section 23B(3). Renewal falls due within 35 days of expiry, with a six-month late window on payment of a fine before cancellation.

Take the date from the registration certificate, not from your opening day, and check it against our renewal calculator.

Common mistakes

• Treating the company certificate as brand protection. It records an entity and nothing more.
• Naming the trade. "Beauty", "spa" and "hair" describe what you do and distinguish nobody.
• Filing Class 44 and then launching a product line, which lands in the busiest part of the register.
• Forgetting that a gym is Class 41, because WIPO's own exclusions put health clubs there.
• Filing the logo only, so a redesign leaves the name unprotected.
• Letting a branch use the name on a handshake rather than the written permission Section 21D contemplates.
• Printing the signboard before searching. A rebrand costs more than a clearance ever will.

What does this look like for one salon?

A Lalitpur salon trades for four years as a registered firm with a PAN, never having filed anything at the Department. It then launches a hair oil under the same name and a short bridal-makeup course.

That is three categories: Class 44 for the treatments, Class 3 for the oil and Class 41 for the course. The Class 44 search comes back clear; the Class 3 search finds two earlier marks close enough to worry about. This is an illustration, not a real case.

The workable answer is to file Class 44 now under the salon's own name, file Class 41 with it, and choose a different product name for the oil rather than fight a crowded class.

In short

Registering a beauty parlour in Nepal means an entity registration, a tax registration and, if you want the name protected, a trade mark application at the Department of Industry. The third is optional in practice and decisive in a dispute.

File Class 44 for what you do, add a class for anything you sell or teach, put branch permissions in writing, and read the renewal date off the certificate rather than off the calendar in your head.

People also search for

• How to register a trademark in Nepal
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• When two marks are confusingly similar
• Trademark registration for small businesses

If the signboard is already up and nothing has been filed, the order is a search, then Class 44, then anything you sell. The Department of Industry publishes its current checklist, WIPO publishes the class list it applies, our clearance service tells you whether the name will survive examination, and you can contact our team before you reprint anything.