Unit 7: Role and Functions of Organizations Dealing with Intellectual Properties in Nepal
7.1 Department of Industry — Industrial Property Section (DOI-IP Section)
The Department of Industry (Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Supplies) administers the industrial-property rights: patents, designs, trademarks and the GI-registration practice. The IP Section’s functions: receiving and examining applications; publishing and registering; hearing oppositions; issuing certificates and renewals; recording assignments and licences; administering the convention-priority faces (Paris applications); and the enforcement’s first administrative face (infringement complaints where the Act provides). The office is also the contact point for WIPO’s international-registration faces (the PCT and Madrid routes when used). The capacity critique (U2.6.1’s note): thin examiners, backlog and the modernisation agenda — the Industrial Property Bill’s long journey.
7.2 Nepal Copyright Registrar’s Office (NCRO)
The Copyright Registrar’s Office administers the Copyright Act 2059: the registration-and-deposit of works (facilitative, not constitutive — copyright is automatic, the registry is evidence), the recordal of assignments and licences, the certification copies, and the copyright information services. The Office works with the enforcement faces (police complaints for piracy) and the copyright-and-related rights’ promotion. The honest note: the registry’s thin usage (most works never registered — the automatic-right’s paradox) and the piracy market’s scale against the Office’s small machinery.
7.3 Department of Archive (National Archive), Custom Offices and Post Offices
The National Archive (the Department of Archaeology-and-Archives world) holds the archival-and-heritage duties: the national records’ custody, the ancient documents’ preservation, and the cultural-heritage protection faces (the TCE’s public custodian in practice). The Customs Offices are the border-enforcement face: the TRIPS-and-national border measures (the suspension-and-seizure of counterfeit and pirated goods at the frontier — U4.6’s and U5.5’s border remedies’ operator). The Post Offices historically carried the postal-exchange and the recordal functions of the old regimes — and today remain a distribution-and-communication face (and an infringement-route watchdog of the mail-order piracy era). Together: the IP system’s non-core custodians whose cooperation the enforcement needs.
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