2025 USPTO Trademark Fee Increases/Changes

Effective January 18, 2025, the USPTO will increase government fees for certain trademark and service mark related filings and requests.

Fee changes relating to the Madrid Protocol designations at the USPTO and for renewals of WIPO will take effect on February 18, 2025.

The fee increases for new national filings target applications containing longer lists of goods and services and applications filed with descriptions of goods and services not contained in the USPTO Trademark ID Manual and Master List.

USPTO Trademark ID Manual and Master List: https://idm-tmng.uspto.gov/id-master-list-public.html

We suggest domestic and foreign clients familiarize themselves with navigating the USPTO Trademark ID Manual and Master List.

Applications filed with identifications of goods and services not included in the list will be subject to a $200 surcharge per class. Additionally, the USPTO is setting a new fee of $200 for each group of 1,000 characters (beyond the first 1,000 characters per class), including punctuation and spaces. The 1,000 character fee will not apply to applications filed using identifications of goods and services from the USPTO Trademark ID Manual and Master List.

The above fee changes will not apply to Madrid Protocol designations. However, filing fees to the USPTO for Madrid Protocol applications will now be increased to $600 per class.

Fee increases and surcharges will mainly be charged by the USPTO at the time of filing a new application. Applications filed before January 18, 2025, should not be impacted by the changes.

However, applications filed using acceptable identifications of goods and services and pending on or after January 18, 2025, may be subject to an insufficient information fee of $100 per class.

The information requirements will mirror the requirements currently in place for applications filed using acceptable identifications of goods and services (refer to TMEP 819.01). Note that the fees are currently most commonly an issue when a translation is not provided at the time of filing a new application.

The comments from the Federal Register suggest that new applications filed with specimens of use clearly not showing the mark and/or grossly inaccurate descriptions of goods and services will be subject to surcharges as appropriate. A completely deficient specimen of use may be subject to an insufficient information surcharge. An application using acceptable identifications of goods and services with highly inaccurate descriptions may be subject to the surcharge for not using acceptable identifications of goods and services.

Other fee increases do not come with rule or practice changes.

Fee Changes

Application Fees

Surcharge Fees