Nepal’s National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy 2082 marks a significant milestone for the country’s technological landscape—and brings important implications for the field of Intellectual Property. As AI-driven innovation accelerates, the policy establishes critical frameworks for data governance, ethical algorithm development, and responsible deployment of AI systems. For IP professionals, this shift introduces new considerations around authorship, ownership, data rights, algorithmic transparency, and protection of AI-generated outputs. The policy emphasizes safeguarding personal data, maintaining cybersecurity standards, and ensuring fair, transparent use of AI technologies. It also signals the need for updated legal frameworks to address challenges such as copyrightability of AI-generated works, patent protection for machine-learning models, and the management of trade secrets used in training datasets.

The AI Policy 2082 calls for developing specific laws relating to AI governance—particularly in areas that intersect with intellectual property, including data confidentiality, algorithm rights, digital asset protection, and prevention of misuse such as deepfakes and unauthorized content creation. It further prioritizes intellectual property rights (IPR) harmonization, ensuring that Nepal’s legal system aligns with global norms for AI-driven innovation. For IP practitioners, this means preparing for new classifications of protectable subject matter, evolving standards for inventive step in AI-assisted inventions, and compliance requirements for AI documentation and disclosure. The policy’s focus on promoting AI startups, research hubs, and public–private partnerships will also increase the volume of patent filings, licensing agreements, and technology transfer activities within Nepal’s innovation ecosystem.

As AI becomes integrated across sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, education, finance, and public services, the demand for IP expertise will rise—particularly in drafting contracts involving training data, model licensing, cross-border data use, and protection of proprietary algorithms. For IP professionals, Nepal’s AI Policy 2082 represents both a challenge and an opportunity: the challenge of adapting to a rapidly evolving digital environment, and the opportunity to help shape a robust IP framework that supports responsible, competitive, and future-ready AI innovation.