2.1 Copyright (the Copyright Act, 2059 (2002))
• Protected works: literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works; sound recordings; audiovisual works; broadcasts; computer programs; and databases/compilations within the Act's scheme — protection automatic on creation (no registration condition; the Registrar's record evidentiary).
• Rights: the economic rights (reproduction, distribution, rental, translation, adaptation, public performance, broadcasting — the owner's exclusive acts) and the moral rights (paternity and integrity — perpetual and personal).
• Term: the general rule — the author's life plus fifty years; shorter statutory terms for neighbouring and applied-arts rights (state the general rule; the special terms by the Act's schedule).
• Limitations: the exceptions' list — private study and research, criticism and review, news reporting, education's classroom uses, library/archival reproduction, the judicial and legislative uses.
• Administration: the Copyright Registrar's Office (registration/records); the collective- management societies (the music-royalty societies' licensing practice); the ownership rules (author-first-owner; employment and commission works).
2.2 Patent (the Patent, Design and Trademark Act, 2022 (1965))
• The grant's requirements: novelty, inventive step and industrial applicability — the world- standard triad;
• The right: the exclusion of others from making, using, selling the invention for the statutory term (renewable within the Act's scheme) — in exchange for disclosure (the specification's publication);
• Exceptions/non-patentables: discoveries, scientific principles, business methods, methods of medical treatment — within the Act's exclusions; the compulsory-licensing/public-interest flexibilities (TRIPS' balance);
• Practice note: Nepal's patent filings are modest — the system's users mainly foreign; the national-innovation policy debates (traditional knowledge's protection — the yarsagumba and ayurvedic-knowledge questions; the genetic-resources access regime).
2.3 Trademark (the PTD Act, 2022)
• The system: registration-based — the distinctive sign (word, device, combination) registered with the Department of Industry (the application, examination, publication, opposition, registration sequence); the statutory terms with renewal;
• Functions: origin, quality and advertising — the mark as the market's search-cost technology;
• Infringement: the registered mark's unauthorized use on identical/similar goods, likelihood of confusion test; the counterfeiting criminality;
• Well-known marks: the amendment-era recognition of well-known marks' protection beyond registration (TRIPS Article 16's effect — the famous marks' cross-class shield);
• Non-use cancellation, assignments and licensing (the franchise economy's base).
2.4 Industrial Design (the PTD Act, 2022)
• Protection: new/original ornamental or aesthetic designs of articles — registered for the statutory terms (the shape, pattern, ornament protecting the product's look — the furniture, textile, packaging industries' interest).
2.5 Trade Secrets
No standalone Nepali statute — protection assembled from: contract (the non-disclosure and non- compete covenants' enforceability within public-policy limits), the employment relationship's duties (the departing employee's confidential information), unfair-competition doctrines, and TRIPS Article 39's disciplines (the WTO obligation: reasonable protection of undisclosed information against commercial dishonesty). The practice: the formula, the client list, the source code — guarded by contract and practical security, litigated as breach-of-confidence.
2.6 Goodwill
The business's accumulated reputation — a property (transferable with the business; the sale's valuation item) protected not by registration but by the passing-off action: no trader may represent his goods as another's (the misrepresentation, goodwill, damage formula of the common-law action absorbed into Nepali unfair-competition practice). Goodwill's neighbours: domain names and trade names (the corporate-name registration's conflicts with trademark priority).