Furniture Design Registration in Nepal: Protecting How Your Pieces Look
Furniture design registration in Nepal: how the PDTA protects a chair or cabinet's look, what the representations must show, fees, term, knockoff response.
A workshop spends months on a chair line — the curve of the back, the joinery, the proportions — and six months later a competitor is selling the same silhouette for less. Furniture is one of the most copied product categories in Nepal, and one of the easiest to protect.
This guide covers furniture design registration in Nepal: what the law protects, how the filing works, what it costs, and what to do when the copy appears anyway.
In short
Furniture design registration in Nepal protects the visual features of a piece — its shape, configuration, pattern or ornamentation — under Sections 12–15 of the PDTA, filed on Schedule 1(b) at the Department of Industry with four sets of representations and NPR 1,000, registering at NPR 7,000. The right runs 5 years from registration, renewable twice to a 15-year maximum. The representations define the scope, so every variant of the range must be shown. How the furniture is built is patent territory; the brand on it is a trademark.
What furniture design registration protects in a piece
A design registration protects the look of the article: the shape of a chair, the configuration of a kitchen cabinet, the pattern worked into a rattan weave. The dividing lines matter for furniture especially, because the category attracts all three rights at once. How a joint or mechanism works — a folding hinge, an ergonomic adjustment — is patent subject matter. The name and logo on the piece are trademark territory. Everything an informed buyer recognises visually before touching it — silhouette, proportions, surface ornamentation — is the design.
The design must be new against earlier registrations and the market, and it must not already be registered by another. Section 14's refusal grounds are narrow, so the screening is largely the applicant's job: search the register and the showrooms before filing.
The filing: representations decide the monopoly
The application goes in on Schedule 1(b) with four sets of representations — drawings or images showing the design — plus particulars stating exactly what is claimed. For furniture this is the whole game: a dining chair files with views from the angles that make its shape legible; a cabinet range files with every door style and dimension variant you want covered, because the Department protects what is depicted, not what is implied.
Practical standards: identical images across the four sets, neutral backgrounds without room-settings or props, consistent angles across the set, and a clear statement of whether colour or surface pattern is claimed. A piece photographed in a styled showroom is marketing; a representation on a neutral ground is a property boundary.
Fees and term for a furniture design
Registration typically completes in weeks to months — substantially faster than a patent — which suits furniture's product cycles: protect the line before the catalogue prints, not after the copies arrive.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Application fee (Schedule 1(b)) | NPR 1,000 |
| Registration fee | NPR 7,000 |
| Term | 5 years from registration |
| Renewals | Twice, 5 years each — 15-year maximum |
| Renewal fees | NPR 1,000/year (years 5–10); NPR 2,000/year (years 10–15) |
| Objection window after publication | 35 days |
Filing before you exhibit — the furniture trap
Furniture launches at exhibitions and trade fairs — and that is where design rights die. Publicly disclosing a look before filing consumes the novelty the registration rests on; a piece shown at a Kathmandu expo in March and filed in June may protect nothing. The rule for workshops and exporters alike: file first, exhibit second, with the representations prepared during prototyping.
The same discipline applies to catalogues, Instagram launches and Daraz listings — any public showing counts as disclosure against your own application.
When the knockoff appears
A registered design gives the standing to act: DOI complaints and enforcement routes for design infringement, plus the practical options — a cease-and-desist letter, platform takedowns for listings on Daraz and local marketplaces, and escalation where the copying is industrial. The registration certificate is what converts an angry conversation into a proceeding; without it, the copied silhouette is merely yours in sentiment.
Evidence discipline starts before the copying: keep dated records of when the design launched, where it sells, and what the representations showed — the comparison in any dispute will be run against exactly what was registered.
The layered strategy for furniture businesses
The workshops that hold the market register in layers: the design on the signature looks, the trademark on the brand and (where the branding is distinctive) the trade dress, and the copyright that subsists automatically in any artistic ornamentation. As the design ages toward its 15-year ceiling, the trademark's continuous use takes over the recognition value — brand equity quietly replacing the expiring right.
For exporters, add the foreign dimension early: a Nepalese design registration protects the look in Nepal only, and key export markets need their own filings — the novelty you preserve at home is the novelty you can claim abroad within Paris Convention windows.
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This article is general information, not legal advice.