What Your Trademark Registration Certificate Means

A Nepali registration certificate for a trade mark is not a free-form document. The Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act carries the certificate formats in its Schedule 2, and the fields track what the Department of Industry records on its register.

Key takeaways

• The Act's Schedule 2 holds the certificate formats: 2(a) for a patent, 2(b) for a design, 2(c) for a trade mark.
• It evidences a register entry; under Sec. 22 the Department maintains that register.
• Title itself comes from registration under Sec. 16, not from holding the paper.
• It covers one mark, one category and one recorded proprietor, and nothing beyond.
• The printed registration date starts the seven-year clock in Sec. 18D, not the date you began trading.
• A trade mark is renewable in seven-year terms under Sec. 23B with no overall limit.
• If the original is lost, Sec. 24 provides for a copy rather than a fresh application.

What does a Nepali trade mark certificate look like?

It is a single official sheet from the Department of Industry naming one mark, one owner and one category, with a registration number and a registration date.

It is not a description of your business. The wording is administrative and short, because its job is to reproduce a register entry rather than explain one.

The rest of this page describes it from the statute and its schedules rather than from a photograph, since the office's printing changes over the years while the statutory format does not.

Where does its layout come from?

From the Act itself. Schedule 2 of the Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act 1965 sets out the certificate formats for all three registered rights: 2(a) for a patent, 2(b) for a design, and Schedule 2(c) for a trade mark. The shape is fixed by statute rather than office preference.

That is worth knowing when a version you are shown looks unfamiliar. Certificates issued decades apart may be typed differently and still be the same instrument.

The content flows from two other places. Sec. 17 governs what the application supplies, and Sec. 22 requires a register of patents, designs and trade marks showing registration or cancellation.

Which fields should you check first?

All of them, on the day it arrives, against the application you filed. An error is cheap to raise early and expensive to discover during a sale or a dispute.

The proprietor line causes the most trouble. A mark registered to a director personally, or to a company since restructured, still belongs to whoever the register names.

What does the certificate prove?

That the Department has registered the mark for the named proprietor in the stated category, which under Sec. 16 is what gives title.

That makes it the document a bank, a distributor or an investor asks for, because it is the shortest proof that the brand is owned rather than merely used.

It is evidence of the register entry rather than the right itself, which is why losing the paper does not lose the mark.

What does it not prove?

That you may use the name for anything. Protection follows the mark as registered and the goods stated, so a certificate for a word does not reach a logo, a slogan or a different trade.

It also proves nothing about a competitor's behaviour. Whether a rival's sign is close enough to infringe is a question of fact and law, and the certificate only starts that argument.

Nor is it a licence to police the market alone. If a conflicting application is published, our opposition and enforcement service is the route; if a competitor is copying you, speak to an advocate.

Why is the registration date the important one?

Because Sec. 18D counts the term from registration. The dates you first used the brand, filed it and saw it published are all earlier, and none starts the clock.

That single line causes more missed renewals than anything else we see. An owner remembers the year they applied, allows nothing for examination and publication, and diarises the wrong year.

Take the date off the certificate, nowhere else. Our renewal date calculator places the next deadline from it.

How long is the certificate valid?

Seven years from that registration date, and then as long as you keep renewing. Sec. 23B allows seven-year terms with no overall ceiling, so a mark can outlive the business that filed it.

Renewal is a filing, not a reminder. On the Act's wording it is due within thirty-five days of expiry, with a further six-month window on payment of a fine, and a registration not renewed in that period is automatically cancelled.

Cancellation is worse than it sounds in a first-to-file country, because the name becomes available to somebody else. Our renewal service exists to stop that happening by accident.

Does the certificate cover every class?

No, and this limit surprises owners most. Sec. 18A requires a separate application for each category, so one certificate covers one category.

A bakery selling packaged goods and running a café is in two categories: two applications and two certificates, each with its own number and renewal date.

Before assuming the certificate stretches, check the activity against our NICE class finder and read the background in the guide to the NICE classification.

Does it still cover a redesigned logo?

Only so far as the new version is still the registered sign. A refreshed typeface or recoloured device can drift far enough that the mark in use is no longer the mark on the certificate.

That matters twice over. A drifted mark is weaker to enforce, and Sec. 18C concerns use, so a registration for a sign nobody uses is an uncomfortable position.

When a rebrand is substantial, treat it as a filing question, not a design one. Our note on whether to register a logo, wordmark or icon first sets out the trade-offs.

How do you get to the certificate in the first place?

Through the ordinary route, which ends rather than begins with the document. An unopposed trade mark commonly takes twelve to fourteen months end to end, and six to eight in the smoothest cases, though no service standard is published.

1. Search the published record for identical and near-identical marks, using our published trade mark search as a first look.
2. Pick the category honestly, on what you sell now rather than what you hope to sell.
3. File the prescribed application under Sec. 17, with specimens of the mark and the applicant's documents.
4. Add a notarised power of attorney if an agent acts for you, as a foreign applicant always needs.
5. Answer the examination under Sec. 18, where the Department inquires and gives you a chance to be heard.
6. Wait through publication in the Industrial Property Bulletin, which opens the opposition period: the Act sets that at 35 days, while trade mark practice is widely described as 90 days.
7. Complete the formalities once the window closes, and collect the certificate the Department issues.

What if you lose the certificate?

The Act answers this directly. Sec. 24, headed "Copy of Certificate", provides that where a certificate of registration is lost, a copy may be obtained from the Department of Industry on payment of a prescribed fee, and Schedule 3 carries a line for it.

Do not file a fresh application instead: that creates a second, later entry for a mark you already own. The full procedure sits in our guide to requesting a duplicate registration certificate.

Is it the same as a company registration certificate?

No. A company certificate from the Office of the Company Registrar records a legal entity; a trade mark certificate records a brand right at the Department of Industry.

Holding the first without the second is the commonest gap in Nepali brand protection. Because Nepal is first-to-file, another business can register your trading name as a mark for its goods.

If entity versus brand is the confusing part, our comparison of an LLP and a trade mark works through it with examples.

Does a foreign certificate work in Nepal?

Not on its own. Sec. 21B states that a patent, design or trade mark registered abroad is not valid in Nepal unless registered here too, and no exception sits elsewhere in the Act.

It still earns its keep during the filing. Sec. 21C allows the Department to register a foreign-registered mark without enquiries where that certificate is enclosed with the application.

Because Nepal sits outside the Madrid System, an international registration never arrives here by itself, and WIPO publishes the party lists.

What should you do the week it arrives?

Treat it as a management document, not a trophy. Five minutes of filing discipline beats the framed copy on the wall.

Check every field against your application, scan it at full resolution, store the scan where it survives a change of staff, and record the number and date in a calendar your business reads.

Then look forward. To see what has been published against a Nepali filing you hold, use our application number lookup, and the primer on what a trade mark is covers the ground behind it.

A worked example

Mitho Mountain is a hypothetical Kathmandu bakery. This is an illustration, not a real case, arranged so each mistake is one we actually see.

It registers a word mark for baked goods and receives a certificate naming the founder personally, in one category, with the shop's first address.

Three years on it has incorporated, moved, added a café and redesigned the logo. Each of those four changes took it further from what the certificate says, and none was recorded.

The right response is unglamorous: record the ownership change and the new address, file for the café category, and decide whether the new logo needs its own application.

Common mistakes

• Counting the seven years from the filing date rather than from the registration date printed on the certificate.
• Quoting the application number where the registration number is wanted.
• Assuming one certificate stretches across every category the business has since entered.
• Leaving the proprietor's name and address stale after an incorporation, a move or a restructuring.
• Treating the ™ sign as a legal status. The Act gives it none, and Sec. 18B forbids presenting a mark as registered before it is.
• Filing a fresh application because the original certificate cannot be found.
• Storing the only copy in one drawer, and never scanning it.

Where can you check the statutory format yourself?

The consolidated Act and its schedules are published by the Nepal Law Commission, and Schedule 2 is where the certificate formats sit.

Current forms and counter practice come from the Department of Industry alone, since those change without the statute changing. Check which consolidation you read, because pre-2006 copies still circulate.

This page is general information, not legal advice, and a contested ownership record deserves an advocate.

In short

Your certificate is a fixed-format record of one register entry: one mark, one proprietor, one category, one date. Schedule 2 sets the shape, Sec. 22 the substance.

Check the fields, count seven years from the printed registration date, keep the details current, and renew before the term runs out. The paper is replaceable; the entry behind it is what you own.

People also search for

• What your patent certificate shows
• What can be trademarked in Nepal
• What makes a logo legally protectable
• If someone copies an unregistered logo
• What intellectual property law means in Nepal

If a field no longer matches your business, or you cannot tell whether the registration is live, send us the number and date and we will check the published record — start on the IP Sewa contact page, or see our trade mark registration service if a second category is the next step.