Trademark Filing Fees on the Rise

If you’ve been contemplating filing a trademark application for a new product name or logo, you may want to work with your trademark attorney to get that project handled before the end of the year. On January 19, 2025, the US Patent and Trademark Office will implement several increases to their filing fees. Time to check in with your counsel and develop a plan!

Basic Application Fee

The main increase that will affect most applicants is that there will no longer be an option of what is currently known as the TEAS Plus application, which has a filing fee of $250 per class. There will only be a Base application option at $350 per class. So, particularly if your application covers several different classes of goods or services, this extra $100 per class can have an impact on filing strategies.

Furthermore, there is an added incentive to use the language provided by the USPTO to describe your goods, rather than using the free-form text box to create your own description. The fee for using the free-form text will now be $200 per class. There will also be a $100 fee per class for providing insufficient information. These changes in particular appear to be aimed at streamlining the process in order to help with the current delay times experienced in the examination process.

Post-registration Fees

There will also be an increase in the fees required for filing renewal documents and statements of continued use to maintain your trademark registrations. The fee for the declaration of continued use will increase from $225 per class to $325 per class, and other declaration fees are increasing by $25 or $50 per class. Again, these declarations generally have a one year period during which they may be filed, so it is worth reaching out to your counsel to check to see if you have any filings that can be made before January 19.

Other Fees

There is also an increase in the fee for filing a petition to revive your application if it is inadvertently abandoned, from $150 to $250. This should also help to encourage efficiency in the USPTO.

Bottom line: check in with your IP counsel before the end of the year to see if you can take advantage of the current fees before an increase in mid-January.