Clinic Trademark in Nepal: Class 44 and the Filing Behind a Trusted Practice
Clinic trademark in Nepal: Class 44 covers medical services, the naming traps clinics hit, what a pharmacy counter adds, and the fees, windows and renewals.
A clinic's name does the reassuring before the consultation does — on the signboard, on the prescription pad, on the report. In Nepal that name is protectable in Class 44, for a filing fee of NPR 1,000, and the practices that register it early are the ones that stop lookalike clinics instead of disputing them.
The class is straightforward. The naming, as always in healthcare, is where clinics stumble.
In short
A clinic trademark in Nepal registers in Class 44 — medical and health services — as a single-class application at the DOI: NPR 1,000 to file, NPR 5,000 to register in current practice, with a 7-year renewable term and a roughly 90-day opposition window after Bulletin publication. Clinics with a pharmacy counter add Class 5 or 35; names built on the doctor's own name are registrable but need namesake screening; and use within the first year keeps the registration safe.
Class 44: the clinic's class
Medical services for people sit in Class 44 of the Nice Classification, alongside hygienic and beauty care services — which is why salons and clinics share a class and can collide within it. The specification claims the clinic's actual services; examiners read it against earlier Class 44 marks, including every similar-sounding practice name already on the register.
One application per class is Nepal's rule: the Class 44 filing is self-contained, with its own fee, examination, publication and 7-year renewal.
The naming traps clinics hit most
- Doctor's name + specialty: registrable, but a 'Dr Sharma' clinic has many namesakes — the search has to include them, and cross-script versions of the name
- Descriptive titles: names built from 'clinic', 'polyclinic', 'health care' plus a generic word invite distinctiveness objections
- Locality names: a place-based name raises the geographic-descriptor limits and cannot monopolise the neighbourhood
- Sound-alike risk: in healthcare, confusingly similar names are a patient-safety concern as well as a legal one — Section 18(1) screening is not a formality here
What else a clinic files
Each extra class is NPR 1,000 to file and NPR 5,000 to register — filed when the activity is real, because a registration for services never offered invites the one-year non-use question under Section 18C.
| Activity | Class | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Consultation and treatment services | 44 | The core filing, before the signboard |
| Pharmacy counter | 5 or 35 | Products sold, or the retail service that sells them |
| Own-brand preparations | 5 | Clinic-branded ointments, tonics, supplements |
| Booking app or teleconsultation | 9 / 42 | Software and platform services under the brand |
Filing the clinic trademark in Nepal: window by window
Search the name, including namesakes
Screen the proposed name across the DOI's published records — exact, phonetic and Devanagari variants, and the personal-name field if the clinic trades on a doctor's name.
File in Class 44
The Schedule 1(c) application takes four specimens of the mark; publication in the Industrial Property Bulletin then opens the roughly 90-day opposition window.
Register, use, renew
The NPR 5,000 registration fee follows acceptance; use the mark genuinely within a year; renew within 35 days of each 7-year expiry at NPR 3,500 per class, with a 6-month grace period carrying a NPR 1,000 fine.
The registration at work
A certificate earns its fee in the situations clinics actually face: a lookalike practice opening nearby, a former partner using the name on a new venture, a pharmacy chain selling under a confusingly similar brand. Each starts with the same asset — a registration — and proceeds through a cease-and-desist letter, DOI complaint or opposition, in ascending order of cost.
Clinics that expand into branches should also keep the register current: name and address changes are NPR 1,000 per mark, and a register entry that still shows an old address is the kind of detail enforcement and diligence both trip over.
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.