How to Track DOI Application Status for a Trademark, Patent or Design in Nepal
How to track DOI application status in Nepal: the filing receipt, examination stages, Bulletin publication, and what each silence and milestone really means.
You filed at the Department of Industry, paid the NPR 1,000 fee and left with a receipt carrying a darta date — and now the file has gone quiet. Nepal does not give applicants a status dashboard; the file's position has to be reconstructed from documents, the Industrial Property Bulletin and the Department itself.
That reconstruction matters for money and deadlines: an objection letter left unanswered, or an opposition window nobody watched, can quietly end an application that was otherwise on track.
In short
To track DOI application status in Nepal, work from three records: the filing receipt (application number and darta date), the Industrial Property Bulletin — publication is the milestone that opens the roughly 90-day opposition window — and the file at the DOI Industrial Property Section in Tripureshwor, which your agent can query by number. Silence usually means backlog or an unanswered letter, not rejection.
What you need before you can track DOI application status
Every application receives two identifiers at filing: the application or record number, and the darta date — the date the Department accepted the filing for processing, expressed in Bikram Sambat. Both appear on the filing receipt, and both are what any status query will be answered against. A number without a legible date, or a date without the number, is how queries stall for weeks.
Capture them the day you file, convert the BS date to AD once, verify it, and file the receipt with the brand's permanent records. Everything in this guide — Bulletin checks, agent queries, opposition countdowns — keys off these two values.
- Application / record number: the DOI's own identifier for the file
- Darta date: the filing date in BS, recorded with its AD equivalent
- Class and mark: quoted in every written query so the file is found first time
The stages an application passes through at the Department
Filing and formality check
The application — Schedule 1(c) for trademarks, 1(a) for patents, 1(b) for designs — is logged, the fee (NPR 1,000 per application in current practice) is paid, and formality defects such as missing documents or unclear representations are flagged early.
Substantive examination
The Department examines substance. For marks, the Section 18 refusal grounds, led by whether an identical or deceptively similar earlier mark exists; for patents, a technical committee reviews the disclosure; for designs, the narrow Section 14 grounds and earlier registrations. Objections issue in writing and must be answered within the stated period.
Publication in the Bulletin
An accepted application is published in the Industrial Property Bulletin. Publication is the single most important status event — it opens the roughly 90-day opposition window counted from the publication date.
Registration and certificate
If the window closes without opposition, the registration fee is paid — NPR 5,000 per class for trademarks, NPR 7,000 for patents and designs in current practice — the right registers, and the certificate issues. The term clock starts here.
The Bulletin: the public record of where your file stands
The Industrial Property Bulletin is the Department's official publication of IP events, listing accepted applications with the mark, applicant, class, goods or services, and dates in BS and AD. If your application appears in it, the file has passed examination and the opposition window is running; if it appears as registered, the certificate stage is done.
The Bulletin also shows what you cannot see any other way: a conflicting application in your own class. Watching each issue is therefore part of status tracking — your file's timeline and everyone else's intersect in the same pages.
| What you observe | What it means |
|---|---|
| Application listed in the Bulletin | Accepted for publication; ~90-day opposition window running from the publication date |
| Mark shown as registered | Registration fee paid, certificate issued, 7-year renewal clock started |
| No trace after months | Pending in examination, held for a correction, or delayed by backlog — query the file |
Querying the file through the Industrial Property Section
For anything the Bulletin does not show, the practical route is a query to the Industrial Property Section at the Department of Industry in Tripureshwor, Kathmandu — in practice made through the agent of record, who knows the file's history and holds the Power of Attorney. A written query quoting the application number, darta date, class and mark gets the file pulled; verbal queries without the number rarely do.
Keep every query and reply in the file. A paper trail of dated correspondence is what proves you responded in time if an objection's deadline is ever disputed.
What silence actually means — and what it costs
The pattern to internalise: status problems in Nepal are deadline problems. The application that dies is rarely refused outright — it is the one whose objection letter went unanswered, or whose publication date nobody diarised.
- Examination backlog: unopposed applications commonly take roughly 6–12 months end to end; months of quiet between stages is normal
- An objection letter in existence: objections are answered within the stated period — a slow response is one of the quietest ways to lose a year
- A third-party opposition: publication opened a window somebody used, and the file moves into a separate proceeding
- A document defect: missing translations, a defective Power of Attorney or unclear representations stall the file until fixed
Deadlines that hide inside a pending file
Two clocks run independently of your tracking. The opposition window runs from the Bulletin's publication date whether or not you know the application published. And once the certificate issues, the renewal clock starts — for a trademark, 7 years to the first renewal, with the 35-day window and 6-month grace discipline after each expiry. Track the file, then track its dates.
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This article is general information, not legal advice.