Trademark Before or After Company Registration in Nepal? The Sequencing That Matters
Filing a trademark before company registration in Nepal is legal — any person or firm may apply. How sequencing, applicant names and recordals decide ownership.
A Nepali founder's planning question, asked in every form from Biswash's momo shop to a funded SaaS team: do we register the company first, or file the trademark first? The two registrations live at different offices, protect different things, and run on different clocks.
The answer is not bureaucratic etiquette — in a first-to-file system, it can decide who owns the brand name a year from now.
In short
There is no requirement to register a company before filing a trademark in Nepal: any person, company or firm may apply at the Department of Industry, no prior use is required, and Nepal follows first-to-file logic — so filing the mark early protects the name while incorporation proceeds. Company registration protects the entity's legal existence, not brand rights in the market. The clean sequence: clear the name, file the trademark (NPR 1,000 per class), incorporate, then record the transfer from founder to company at the DOI (NPR 2,000 assignment recordal).
File the trademark before company registration — the short answer
Trademark law in Nepal does not ask what kind of entity you are yet. The Patent, Design and Trade Mark Act, 2022 BS (1965) lets any person, company or firm apply, and there is no requirement that the mark already be in use — which makes filing a sensible step for a brand that exists only as a plan and a name.
Nepal is first-to-file: there is no use-based priority until a mark registers, so a later filer with a certificate generally stands ahead of an earlier trader without one. Waiting for incorporation to 'keep everything tidy' hands the race to whoever files first — and squatters do read launch announcements.
Two registrations, two different protections
The confusion is understandable: both offices put a name on a certificate. But a company name registration stops another company from incorporating under the same name — it does not stop a trader from selling products under it. Only the trademark register does that work.
| Question | Company registration | Trademark registration |
|---|---|---|
| Where it happens | The company registrar | Department of Industry (DOI), Industrial Property Section |
| What it protects | The legal existence of the entity; the company name as a corporate formality | The mark itself, for specific goods/services, class by class |
| Does it block a copycat? | Not trademark use — the registrar's register is not the trademark register | Yes — in the registered classes, once registered |
| Government fees | The registrar's own schedule | NPR 1,000 application + NPR 5,000 registration per class |
| Term | Continuing compliance duties | 7 years from registration, renewable indefinitely |
A sequencing that works for Nepali founders
Clear the name first
Search the published record — exact, phonetic and transliterated forms — before committing the name to either registration. Most doomed applications were doomed on day one.
File the trademark in the founder's name
An individual promoter or an unregistered firm can file the Schedule 1(c) application now — the core class first, since Nepal requires one application per class.
Incorporate and start trading
Company registration proceeds in parallel — the trademark examination (six to twelve months for a clean filing) does not wait for it, and does not need it.
Record the ownership change at the DOI
Once the company exists, execute an assignment from founder to company and record it — NPR 2,000 per mark. Where details like the company name later change, a record change runs NPR 1,000. Clean records now are what investors and buyers check later.
Why waiting for incorporation costs real trademark risk
The registration journey takes months even when nothing goes wrong — formality check, substantive examination under Section 18, publication in the Industrial Property Bulletin with its roughly 90-day opposition window. A startup that files at incorporation inherits a brand that is unprotected through its most visible, most copyable months.
Nepali practice has its cautionary tales: the Swastik Fragrance dispute — where a foreign brand found its mark preemptively filed locally — is the standard example of what first-to-file punishes. The lesson is not that incorporation must be slow; it is that the trademark calendar and the incorporation calendar should run in parallel, with the trademark filed first.
Keeping the chain of title clean for the diligence that follows
Every funding round, franchise negotiation and acquisition eventually asks: does the company own the mark, on paper, at the DOI? The answer is a chain — founder's application, assignment deed, recorded transfer, register entry matching the company's current name and address.
Recordals are cheap in Nepal (NPR 1,000–2,000) and are the difference between a portfolio that passes diligence and one that needs weeks of repair mid-deal. Budget them as part of the incorporation paperwork, not as an afterthought.
Want this handled for your brand?
IP Watch monitors new trademark publications in Nepal and alerts you to potentially conflicting marks — with the context needed to review them.
This article is general information, not legal advice.