Securing Trademark Rights for Tech Startups in Nepal

Name selection: the cheapest IP decision

The name determines everything downstream. Distinctive names — coined (Fonepay-style coinages), arbitrary (existing words in unrelated fields) — clear faster, register easier, and enforce stronger. Descriptive names ('QuickPay', 'EasyLearn') face distinctiveness objections, are harder to police, and box the brand in. The startup instinct toward descriptive names is exactly backwards for registrability: pick the name you can own, not the one that explains the product.

Then clear it before you commit: the word search across both scripts and transliterations, the class-level screen, and a decision. An afternoon of screening in week one prevents the year-two discovery that the name belongs to someone else's registration.

What to file, and when, on a startup budget

Government fees are startup-scale: NPR 1,000 to file and NPR 5,000 at registration, per class — the strategic cost is attention, not money. The sequence that works: file the core class before launch (first-to-file does not wait for traction), add the adjacent class when the business model actually spans it, and register the bilingual or composite form where the market meets both scripts. Where a rename or rebrand happens later, file the new brand immediately — the old registration keeps renewing until the transition completes.

Two startup-specific notes. The one-year use rule (Section 18C) rewards filing close to launch rather than years ahead — plan filings with the roadmap. And founder ownership: the marks belong to the company from day one, with founder assignments executed at incorporation, so the cap table and the register tell the same story when investors look.

• Core class before launch; adjacents with the model
• File close to launch — the one-year use rule rewards it
• Founder assignments at incorporation: register = cap table

Classes for digital products

Digital businesses span classes more than most, and the mapping is learnable once:

The discipline that scales

The habits that make the portfolio an asset rather than a liability: watch from filing day (oppositions inside the window are the cheapest defence a startup will ever run); use the marks as filed (packaging, app store listings, invoices consistent with the registrations — which also builds the Section 18C use file); record changes when reality changes (name, address, structure); and renew on the calendar (the 7-year clock arrives faster than a startup's institutional memory).

None of this needs a legal department. It needs a calendar, an afternoon a quarter, and the register-first instinct: in Nepal, the brand belongs to whoever filed — make that whoever, you.