Securing Source Code: Does Nepal's Copyright Act Protect SaaS Platforms?

What the Copyright Act actually covers for software

Nepal's Copyright Act 2059 lists computer programs among protected works, treating them in the literary-works family — the Berne-consistent approach. Protection attaches automatically on creation (no registration required) and covers: source code and object code (both are expressions); UI text and copy; documentation; and databases as compilations, to the extent their selection or arrangement is original — the data itself is never the protected part.

The rights that follow: reproduction, adaptation/translation, distribution, public communication, and licensing/assignment of those economic rights — held by the author by default, which for company-built software is the trap the next section solves. Term: life-plus-50 for natural authors; 50 years from publication for works of legal entities.

• Code as literary work — automatic, no registration needed
• Covers source, object, UI copy, docs; original compilations
• Rights vest in the human author first — assignments matter

What copyright does NOT cover — the parts founders assume it does

Functionality and algorithms. Copyright protects expression, never ideas — the *way* your code is written, not the *things it does*. A competitor who independently builds the same features infringes nothing. Business logic and workflows — the pricing engine's rules, the onboarding flow — live in the same gap; their protection is contract (ToS, licences) and secrecy, not copyright. The data — your customer records, transaction history, training sets — is not copyrighted by collecting it; contracts and the (pending) trade-secret framework govern it. The brand — the name, the logo users search for — is trademark, a different registry and a different Act.

The corollary founders miss: copyright controls copying, not use. A customer who buys a licence and uses your platform exactly as designed breaches nothing copyrighted — the licence terms are what bind their use. Software protection in Nepal is therefore never a single filing; it is copyright + contract + trademark + secrecy, layered.

The ownership trap: Nepal's creator-first default

Nepal's Copyright Act grants initial ownership to the human creator — there is no statutory work-for-hire doctrine making employers automatic owners. A Kathmandu dev shop whose contractors wrote the codebase without written assignments may have an implied licence to operate — and no right to sell, license or enforce the copyright against anyone. The gap surfaces at the worst times: due diligence, an acquisition, an infringement response.

The fix is unglamorous and urgent: written IP assignment clauses in every employment, contractor and services agreement — for current staff (retroactive assignments where missing), future hires, and every agency that ever touched the product. Pair with creation records (repo history, dated builds) and voluntary registration of the core codebase at the Nepal Copyright Registrar's Office — not because registration creates the right, but because a government certificate is the ownership evidence diligence and courts weight most.

The patent question: why the code can't be patented (yet)

Nepalese patent practice — like most of the world's — treats computer programs as such as unpatentable subject matter; the Industrial Property Bill 2082 continues the exclusion (programs, plant varieties and scientific theories sit outside patentable invention). What *can* approach patentability is the technical invention the software implements — a novel method with technical effect in a hardware context, say. In practice, Nepalese software patents are rare, examination of such claims is thin, and founders should not build a protection strategy on one.

The realistic reading for a Nepalese SaaS founder: copyright is your code's shield; trademark is your brand's; secrecy and speed are your architecture's; and contracts are the load-bearing layer binding users, employees and partners. The Bill's trade-secret section (Chapter 8, Section 81) will formalise the last layer — until then, NDAs carry it.

• Software-as-such excluded from patentability — Bill continues the rule
• Technical inventions with real-world effect are the arguable edge
• Build the stack: copyright + TM + secrecy + contracts