Updated United States Patent and Trademark Office Fee Schedule

On November 15, 2024, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) announced that effective January 18, 2025, certain trademark filing fees are set to increase.

The Final Rule is intended to “enable the USPTO to accomplish its mission to drive U.S. innovation, inclusive capitalism, and global competitiveness by delivering high-quality and timely trademark examination and review proceedings that produce accurate and reliable trademark rights for domestic and international stakeholders.”

Upon reviewing the Final Rule, we believe the most significant changes are as follows:

Trademark Applications

The USPTO has replaced the two (2) current types of application fees – Trademark Application System (TEAS) Plus ($250 per class) and TEAS Standard ($350 per class), with a single base application fee ($350) for trademark applications under Sections 1 and 44.

Starting on January 18, 2025, the USPTO will charge $350 per class for new trademark applications under Sections 1 and 44 that utilize the USPTO’s Acceptable Identification of Goods and Services Manual, possess sufficient information (e.g. domicile address; description of a design trademark; English translation of non-English wording; transliteration of non-Latin characters), and contain 1,000 or fewer characters per class.

For new trademark applications under Sections 1 and 44 that do not meet this criteria, the USPTO will assess the following surcharges in addition to the $350 “base application fee” per class:

The USPTO’s surcharges are intended to help streamline the trademark examination process in an effort to reduce pendency of the examination of new trademark applications.

We believe the impact of these changes will be significant:

•   Increased Need for U.S. Applicants to Use U.S. Counsel – an experienced U.S. trademark counsel can help avoid any unnecessary new surcharge fees.
•   Applicants Will Spend More Time Formulating Filing Strategy – Trademark applicants will need to spend more pre-filing time to ensure (i) all necessary information is included; and (ii) determining the critical goods/services to be included in the trademark application.
• Section 44 Applicants May be Steered Towards Filing Section 66(a) Madrid Applications – it may now be more cost effective to file Madrid Applications relying on other country registrations/applications with extensive lists of goods/services.

Madrid Trademark Applications

The fee for filing a trademark application under Section 66(a) (“Madrid”) of the Trademark Act will be $600 per class – up from $500 per class. This is considered by the USPTO as “a level that corresponds with what Madrid applicants would expect to pay, on average, if filing directly under the base application and surcharge system.”  Importantly, because the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is not currently able to collect surcharges prior to recording a Section 66(a) application, Madrid trademark applicants will not be assessed surcharges for insufficient information, use of a free-form text box for the identification of goods, or the number of characters in the identification of goods.

Petitions and Letter of Protest

The USPTO has significantly increased its fees to “recover more of the cost of processing petitions and letters of protest.” The USPTO will increase its fees in the following manner:

Trademark Maintenance

Finally, the USPTO will be increasing the fees for post-registration maintenance filings as follows:

Recommendation

Given the adjustments required by these coming updated fees, we strongly encourage our clients to review their trademark portfolios and consider what actions can be taken before January 18, 2025, to lessen the cost of filing new applications and maintaining existing registrations.

Nath, Goldberg & Meyer remains available to assist in this or any other aspect of protecting your valuable intellectual property rights.