Advocate Astha Sharma

Biography

Advocate Astha Sharma advises Nepali businesses and international clients on the protection, prosecution, and enforcement of intellectual property in Nepal. Her work centres on trademarks, patents, and industrial designs — from clearance and filing through office actions, registration, and portfolio management.

She has more than five years of legal experience, including substantial litigation before courts and administrative authorities. That is not a side line. It is how she reads a filing pack: will this specification survive an examiner, an opponent, and, if it comes to it, a judge? The record has to stand up. The strategy has to be commercial. The client should always know the next step.

Day to day that means trademark searches, drafting and prosecuting applications, answering examination reports, planning enforcement, and guiding foreign counsel through the Department of Industry. She is used to acting for brand owners who need Nepal handled carefully as part of a wider regional or global portfolio — and for Nepali companies that are putting a first mark or a first design on the register and want it done properly.

A Nepal filing is not a translated home application. It is a local right, under a local statute, on a local clock.

Astha currently practises as a Managing Associate atGlobal Law Associates. The firm profile is the professional record of that role. ASTHA INLAW is her personal practice home — a place for biography, writing, and direct enquiries.

How she works

Intellectual property in Nepal is still, for many clients, a gap on a map. The Patent, Design and Trademark Act, 2022 (1965) is territorial. Using a mark in India, China, or Europe does not by itself put a right on the Nepali register. Paris Convention priority can help — if the diary is kept. The PCT cannot: Nepal is not a contracting party, so there is no national phase into Kathmandu.

The work is therefore practical. Search before you file, when a search will change the class list or the mark. File while the priority window is open. Watch the Industrial Property Bulletin after publication, not only after grant. Write the specification so it can be enforced, not merely accepted. If someone else is already using the sign in the market, say so at the start — the forum may not be the register.

Clear reporting

Status, diary, and the next decision. Foreign counsel should not have to decode a local file to brief their client.

Commercial first

A letter, an opposition, an administrative complaint, or a court action — chosen for what needs to happen in the market, not for process.

A usable record

Applications are drafted with later disputes in mind. Gaps that look harmless at filing become expensive at trial.

Plain language

Statute and Department practice, explained so a founder or a partner in London can act on them the same afternoon.

Working with foreign counsel

A large part of the practice is instructed from abroad. The useful pack is short: the mark or the specification, the goods or services, the home filing date and number, any existing registrations, and the deadline you can already see. Powers of attorney and legalised papers can follow. What cannot wait is the Paris clock — twelve months for patents, six for designs and trademarks, counted from the first filing.

Reports go back in the same spirit: what was filed, what the Department is likely to ask, when the bulletin will matter, and what the client should decide now rather than later. Nepal is treated as a listed country on the same sheet as any other national filing, not as a favour at the end of the list.

If a deadline is running, put it in the first line of the email. The rest of the story can follow in the same note.

What ASTHA INLAW is

ASTHA INLAW is not a second firm and not a substitute for an engagement letter. It is a public chambers: the biography, the writing on Nepal IP, and a door for people who want to write directly. Live matters are confirmed in writing. Current practice remains at Global Law Associates.

The writing on this site is general information. It is meant to help instructing counsel and clients ask better questions. It is not an opinion on a live application, a search, or a dispute.

Questions