Effective January 18, 2025, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will implement a new fee schedule for trademark filings. According to the USPTO, the purpose of the fee changes is to “enhance the quality of incoming applications, encourage efficient application processing, ensure additional examination costs are paid by those submitting more time-consuming applications, and reduce pendency.”
Key points
- The USPTO set a flat $350 base application fee per class of goods or services, new fees for free-form or lengthy identifications of goods and services, and new fees for insufficient information provided in original applications.
- The USPTO is raising fees related to the prosecution of trademark applications, the maintenance of trademark registrations, the petitions process, and the protest of third-party applications.
- These fee changes are effective January 18, 2025.
New fees
On top of the flat $350 application fee per class, the Office will now charge applicants an additional $200 per class if any listed goods and/or services in any class in the application do not appear verbatim in the USPTO Acceptable Identification of Goods and Services Manual (ID Manual) or otherwise comply with USPTO instructions. For multi-class applications that rely primarily but not exclusively on the ID Manual, filing separate applications for the more expensive free-form goods and services may be prudent. While useful, the ID Manual is not exhaustive and will never cover every potential good or service an applicant intends to offer. If a free-form identification of goods or services in any class exceeds 1,000 characters, an additional fee of $200 applies for each additional set of 1,000 characters. These fees place a new emphasis on brevity in drafting identifications of goods and services.
These fees apply only to applications filed under Sections 1 and 44 of the Trademark Act, not those filed under the Madrid Protocol (Section 66). These surcharge fees will therefore primarily impact domestic applicants, even though foreign applicants filing under the Madrid Protocol typically include the most verbose identifications of goods and services.
We recognize these fees may disproportionately impact our clients with unique or highly specialized goods or services. Please speak with your Fish attorney regarding strategies to minimize surcharges while ensuring the appropriate breadth of new filings.
In addition to the new fees related to the identification of goods and services, the USPTO will assess an “insufficient information” fee of $100 per class for applications that do not include all information required at the time of filing.1 This is information your Fish attorney routinely provides in each filing.
If you would like to discuss how these changes may affect your filing and prosecution strategies, please contact your Fish attorney or see the USPTO’s examination guide.
Increased fees
The USPTO will otherwise increase trademark fees as follows:
