UI Design Protection in Nepal: App Icons, Interfaces and What Each Right Covers
UI design protection in Nepal: how app icons, interface graphics and layouts map to design registration, copyright and trademark — and where the design route ends.
A mobile product's visual identity is spread across many small assets: the app icon, the splash screen, the interface layouts, the illustrated elements users learn to recognise. Protecting them in Nepal means mapping each asset to the right right — and knowing where the industrial design route, built for physical articles, reaches its limit.
This guide sets out UI design protection in Nepal asset by asset, with the filing logic and the boundaries made explicit.
In short
UI design protection in Nepal splits by asset: the app icon as a brand signifier is a device trademark (7-year renewable term at the DOI); the icon's artwork and the interface's illustrations, screens and graphics are copyright — automatic from creation under the Copyright Act 2059, with voluntary registration at the Copyright Registrar's Office as evidence; the industrial design route (Schedule 1(b), NPR 1,000 + NPR 7,000, 5+5+5 years) protects ornamentation applied to an article, so it fits physical products and packaging better than screen graphics, whose article-application in Nepalese practice is uncertain. The layering rule: trademark the icon, copyright the interface, design the hardware.
UI design protection in Nepal: the asset map
Interface work produces assets of three kinds, and Nepalese law answers each with a different tool. Getting the map right first prevents the most common mistake — filing for the wrong right and paying for protection that does not attach.
| Asset | Best-fit right | Why |
|---|---|---|
| App icon as the brand signifier | Device trademark | Distinguishes your app in the market; 7-year renewable term |
| Icon artwork, illustrations, screens | Copyright (automatic) | Artistic works protected from creation; NCRO registration as evidence |
| The product's physical look — device, packaging | Industrial design | Ornamentation applied to an article; 5+5+5 years |
| The app's name | Word trademark | Class 9 and 42 filings for software goods and services |
| Underlying code | Copyright (+ trade secrets by contract) | Literary work under the Act; source code held confidential |
The industrial design question: how far does 'article' stretch?
Nepal's design registration protects shape, configuration, pattern or ornamentation applied to an article by an industrial process under the PDTA's Sections 12–15. The framework was written for manufactured goods — a tap, a textile, a cabinet — and whether a screen graphic counts as ornamentation 'applied to an article' in Nepalese practice is genuinely unsettled. Screen-based designs exist as an industry elsewhere precisely because GUI-specific provisions were legislated; Nepal's statute does not yet have one.
The honest planning position: do not build an app icon strategy on design registration. The icon is protectable today — but through the trademark and copyright routes, which are settled. Where a digital product has a physical presence — a payment terminal, a branded router, packaging for shipped hardware — the design route is the correct and proven tool.
The trademark route: the icon as a brand
An app icon functions as a trademark the moment users recognise it — and Nepalese practice registers devices: words, logos, composite labels. Filing the icon as a device mark (its own Schedule 1(c) application, NPR 1,000 at filing, NPR 5,000 at registration) gives the symbol a renewable, enforceable registration with class-wide rights — Class 9 for the app, Class 42 for the services, each class separate under the single-class rule.
The composite question is worth deciding deliberately: a label mark covering name-plus-icon protects the combination; separate word and device filings protect each element against de-branding — a redesigned app that drops the old icon but keeps the name, or the reverse. Fintech and consumer apps, where icon recognition is the entire shelf presence, usually justify both filings.
The copyright route: the interface as expression
Everything drawn for the interface — icon artwork, illustrations, screen layouts as graphic works — is protected by copyright automatically from creation under the Copyright Act, 2059 (2002): no filing, no fee. The automatic right is real but evidentiary, and interface work is exactly where evidence gets contested — designers are contractors, files are iterated, and ownership follows the written assignment, not the invoice.
Two paperwork disciplines close the gap. Contract: every designer and agency agreement assigns the artwork to the company — an unassigned design is the defect that surfaces at diligence. Registration: for the crown-jewel assets (the core icon set, signature illustrations), voluntary registration at the Copyright Registrar's Office converts the automatic right into a dated government record — presumptive evidence in any dispute.
The cloner problem: enforcement reality
Interface copying in Nepal is usually a combined problem: a cloned app lifts the icon (trademark), the screens (copyright) and the name (trademark). Enforcement therefore stacks the rights — a takedown demand to the app store or platform citing the registered device mark and the copyright works, a cease-and-desist letter on the DOI registration, and escalation through the DOI or courts where the platform route stalls.
The registered rights change the conversation: platforms act faster on documented ownership, and an infringer facing certificates rather than assertions settles. This is the practical return on the filings — not preventing copying, which no registration does, but making the copying expensive and slow.
The layering rule, stated once
For a Nepalese software product: trademark the name and the icon; copyright the graphics and the code (assignments first, registration for the crown jewels); reserve design registration for the physical articles the product ships in or with; hold the source code as a secret by contract. Each layer is cheap individually — the risk is not the cost of the filings but the assumption that one of them covers the others.
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This article is general information, not legal advice.