Cafe Trademark in Nepal: Classes 30 and 43, the Menu, and the Chain Math
A cafe trademark in Nepal: Class 43 for the service, Class 30 for packaged goods, what two classes cost, why menu names matter, and how the renewal clock runs.
Kathmandu's café scene expands every season, and every season a few owners discover the same thing: the name they spent three years building — on the signboard, the menu, the Instagram — belongs to someone else on the register, or worse, belongs to nobody, which in a first-to-file system means it belongs to whoever files next.
A cafe trademark in Nepal is a two-class question with a chain-growth tail. Here is the map, the math, and the menu-name trap.
In short
A cafe trademark in Nepal needs Class 43 — services for providing food and drink — as the core filing, plus Class 30 where the café sells packaged goods: coffee, tea, baked goods, confectionery. Nepal files one application per class, so the two-class brand costs 2 × NPR 1,000 at filing and 2 × NPR 5,000 at registration, renewing at NPR 3,500 per class every 7 years inside a 35-day window. Menu names worth defending are trademarks too, and descriptive names invite Section 18 refusal. Chains and franchises add the recordal layer — licence recordals run NPR 2,000 per mark — and the 90-day opposition window is where rival café names surface.
A cafe trademark in Nepal: Class 43 for service, Class 30 for goods
Class 43 covers services for providing food and drink — the dine-in and takeaway café experience itself. Class 30 covers the goods side: coffee, tea, cocoa, flour preparations, bread, pastry and confectionery. A café that also bags its house roast or sells packaged bakes under its name is selling goods, and goods live in their own class.
Nepal applies the Nice Classification under Section 18A of the PDTA with one application per class — no multi-class bundling. The class map comes first; the forms come second.
| Business activity | Class | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Café, bakery café and food service | 43 | Food and drink services |
| Packaged coffee, tea, baked goods, sweets | 30 | Foodstuffs of plant origin and cereal preparations |
| Retail or takeaway counters as trading | 35 | Bringing goods to the consumer |
| Bottled drinks or dairy lines | 32 / 29 | Separate goods classes for adjacent lines |
| Merchandise — mugs, tees, tote bags | 21 / 25 | Goods sold under the brand |
| Delivery app presence | 9 / 42 | Software and online services, if the app is yours |
The two-class cost math
Two classes mean two applications: 2 × NPR 1,000 at filing and 2 × NPR 5,000 at registration — NPR 12,000 in government fees across the journey, before professional fees. Each class then renews on its own clock: NPR 3,500 per class every 7 years, due within 35 days of expiry, with a six-month grace route at NPR 4,500 including the NPR 1,000 fine.
The sequencing rule: file the revenue-critical class immediately — for most cafés that is Class 43 — and add Class 30 as the packaged line approaches production. Idle classes cost fees now and renewals forever, and an unused registration is itself vulnerable under the one-year use rule.
Menu names and the café brand
Café brands are named twice: the house name on the signboard and the item names on the menu. The house name is the obvious trademark. The dish names are a slower asset — a signature item whose name customers repeat is on its way to being a mark worth registering, and unregistered item names can be registered by a competitor under Nepal's first-to-file rules.
Examination cuts both ways. Section 18 refuses marks that merely describe the goods — a name that says only 'The Bakery House' invites the descriptive objection — and refuses names that are identical or deceptively similar to earlier marks, including Devanagari sound-alikes, which matter in a market where the same café name gets transliterated across scripts.
The launch sequence
A café's branding spend — signage, menus, photography — should start only after the search and the filing, because every rupee spent on a conflicting name is spent on a rebrand.
Search across scripts
Screen the name and the menu stars against registered marks and published applications, in both scripts.
File Class 43 now, Class 30 with the product line
Schedule 1(c) per class, four specimen labels of about 8×8 cm, NPR 1,000 each.
Watch the 90-day window
Accepted applications publish in the Industrial Property Bulletin; rival café names surface as oppositions here.
Register and build the use file
NPR 5,000 per class at registration; then keep invoices, menus and signage as Section 18C use evidence.
The chain-growth tail: branches, franchises and recordals
One registration covers every branch under the same owner — the renewal clock does not multiply per outlet. What does change the paperwork is structure. A franchise or licence to an operator requires a recorded licence agreement (NPR 2,000 per mark at current rates) with quality-control terms, and an ownership change or corporate reorganisation requires an assignment recordal (NPR 2,000 per mark) or a name and address record change (NPR 1,000) so the register keeps pointing at the real owner.
The cafés that grow cleanly treat the register as part of operations: renewals diarised in BS and AD, recordals filed as deals happen, and a watch on the Bulletin so the second location's brand is defended in its first month, not its third year.
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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.