USPTO Trademark Fees Explained, Line by Line

Every USPTO trademark fee is charged per class, not per application. That single rule drives the entire schedule. A base application in one class runs about $350. The same mark filed in three classes runs $1,050 at filing, and every maintenance filing for the rest of the mark’s life multiplies by three as well. Add the office action responses, extension requests, and two rounds of maintenance filings in the first ten years, and a single-class registration costs $1,325 in government fees by year ten. A three-class registration costs $3,975 for identical work.

Here is every line in the schedule, when it triggers, and how to avoid the ones that are optional.

The Old Two-Tier System and What Replaced It

For roughly a decade the USPTO offered two electronic filing options, and the difference between them shows up in every older article you will read.

TEAS Plus, $250 per class. Cheaper, with strings. You had to use a pre-approved identification of goods from the ID Manual, complete every field, agree to receive correspondence by email, and file everything electronically. Break any of those requirements mid-prosecution and the USPTO charged a $100 per class surcharge to convert you to the standard tier.

TEAS Standard, $350 per class. More expensive, more flexible. You could write your own identification of goods and leave optional fields open.

In January 2025 the USPTO collapsed the two tiers. There is now a single base application fee of about $350 per class, with surcharges layered on when your filing is incomplete or nonstandard. A careful filer who uses ID Manual descriptions and completes every field pays the base fee and nothing more. A filer who writes free-form goods descriptions pays surcharges that can exceed the old TEAS Standard price.

The practical lesson has not changed: use the ID Manual, fill in every field, and you pay the floor. The current numbers live on the USPTO fees and payment page, and they move on the agency’s own schedule rather than any predictable calendar.

The Full Schedule

Response to an office action carries no USPTO fee. That surprises people. The cost of an office action is entirely in attorney time or your own, unless you need an extension of the response deadline, which does carry a fee.

Per-Class Math, and Why It Compounds

The class count moves the total more than any other choice you make, and it is made in the first twenty minutes by someone who has never made it before.

A cordless ice auger sold with a branded blade set and a branded carry bag touches three classes: power tools in Class 7, hand tools or cutting blades depending on the item in Class 8, and bags in Class 18. Filing all three costs $1,050 at the door. It also costs $975 at the year-five declaration and $1,950 at the year-ten renewal. Across ten years, $3,975 in government fees for one name.

Filing only Class 7, where the actual product and the actual revenue sit, costs $350, $325, and $650. Total $1,325. The blades and the bag are still protected in practice by the likelihood-of-confusion doctrine, because a competitor selling blades under your auger name confuses the same buyers.

There is a second reason to file narrow. The USPTO audits a portion of Section 8 filings and demands proof of use on the goods listed. If you registered three classes and can only prove use in one, you delete the others and pay a deletion fee, and a bad-faith reading of an over-broad filing can invite a cancellation petition from someone who wants your name.

File the classes you sell in. Add classes later with a new application if the product line expands. The framing of that decision against the rest of your protection budget sits in what a trademark costs.

The Intent-to-Use Fee Chain

Filing before you sell locks in your priority date and starts a spend that most inventors underestimate.

The sequence: file on intent-to-use basis for $350 per class. Examination runs six to twelve months. Publication runs 30 days. Notice of Allowance issues. From that date you have six months to file a statement of use with a real specimen and $150 per class.

Not selling yet at month six? File a request for an extension of time, $125 per class, and buy another six months. You may do this five times, for a maximum of 36 months past the Notice of Allowance. Each request after the first requires a statement of ongoing efforts to bring the product to market.

A two-class filer who uses all five extensions pays $1,250 in extension fees plus $300 in statement-of-use fees on top of the $700 base. That is $2,250 in government fees for a mark that has not registered yet.

The alternative is filing on a use basis after launch for $350 per class, with no extensions and no separate statement of use. Cheaper, but you carry the risk that someone files first during the gap. The timing tradeoff is worked through in do you need a trademark before launch.

Maintenance: Years Five, Six, Nine, and Ten

Trademarks are the only intellectual property right with an unlimited term, and the price of that is a maintenance schedule that runs forever.

Between the fifth and sixth anniversary of registration. File a Section 8 declaration of continued use, $325 per class, with a specimen showing current use for each class. Miss the sixth anniversary and you get a six-month grace period at a $100 per class surcharge. Miss the grace period and the registration cancels with no revival.

At the same time, optionally. File a Section 15 declaration of incontestability, $250 per class, if the mark has been in continuous use for five consecutive years with no adverse decision and no pending proceeding. Incontestability removes descriptiveness and prior-use challenges from the table. It is a genuinely useful $250, and it is the one optional fee worth paying.

Between the ninth and tenth anniversary. File a combined Section 8 declaration and Section 9 renewal, $650 per class total. Same grace period, same surcharge, same cancellation risk.

Every ten years after that, forever. Same combined filing, same $650 per class.

Set calendar reminders 90 days before each window opens. The USPTO sends courtesy email reminders to the address of record, and the address of record goes stale on a five-year gap more often than anyone expects. Registration cancellation for a missed Section 8 is the single most common way independent inventors lose a trademark they paid for.

Note the shape of that schedule against the patent side. Patent maintenance fees fall due at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years and then stop, because the patent expires at 20 years from filing. Trademark maintenance never stops, because the mark never expires. The patent version of this same calendar is broken down in the USPTO fee schedule explained.

No Small Entity Discount on the Trademark Side

Patent filers get real discounts. Small entity status cuts most patent fees by 60%. Micro entity status cuts them by 75%. An independent inventor filing a provisional pays $130 to $325 instead of the undiscounted rate, and the qualification rules are worth understanding, which is why they get their own treatment in small entity and micro entity status.

None of that applies to trademarks. The USPTO charges the same trademark fees to a solo inventor in Champlin and to a Fortune 100 company. There is no small entity trademark rate, no micro entity trademark rate, and no fee waiver program. Budget the full number.

Where the Money Leaks

Four avoidable charges account for most of the overspend on self-filed applications.

Free-form goods descriptions. Writing your own identification instead of pulling from the ID Manual adds $200 per class, and adds another $200 for every additional 1,000 characters. A long custom description across two classes can add $800 to a $700 filing. It also raises the odds of an office action about the wording, which then costs you time or attorney fees.

Incomplete fields. The insufficient-information surcharge is $100 per class for leaving required entries blank. It is charged for carelessness, not complexity.

Grace period filings. A $100 per class surcharge on a maintenance document you had a twelve-month window to file. Pure calendar failure.

Petitions to revive. $150 to bring back an application you abandoned by missing a response deadline. Also pure calendar failure, and the petition requires a statement that the delay was unintentional.

Every one of those is a process problem, not a legal problem. A single spreadsheet with five dates on it prevents all four.

What the Fees Do Not Cover

The fee schedule pays the USPTO to examine and register. It does not pay for a clearance search, which the agency does not perform for applicants. It does not pay for an attorney. It does not pay for monitoring after registration, which runs $200 to $800 a year through a watch service. It does not pay for enforcement, where a cease-and-desist letter runs $500 to $1,500 and a Trademark Trial and Appeal Board proceeding runs $10,000 to $80,000.

It also does not cover international protection. A Madrid Protocol application filed through the USPTO carries a certification fee plus WIPO’s basic fee plus a designation fee for each country. Budget $2,000 to $5,000 for a small group of markets.

Set the trademark line next to the rest of the bill before you decide how much of it to spend. A full accounting of every dollar from first sketch through first production run is laid out in the complete inventor cost breakdown.

FAQ

Do USPTO trademark fees change?

Yes. The agency adjusts fees periodically under its statutory authority, most recently in the January 2025 restructuring that eliminated the TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard tiers. Verify current numbers directly with the USPTO trademark basics section before filing rather than trusting any published figure, including this one.

Is there a fee to respond to a trademark office action?

No USPTO fee for a standard response filed within the three-month window. There is a fee if you need an extension of the response deadline, and there is an attorney fee if you hire counsel, generally $400 to $1,500 depending on the refusal.

What happens if I miss the Section 8 deadline?

You get a six-month grace period with a $100 per class surcharge. After that the registration cancels and cannot be revived. You would have to file a brand-new application and lose your original priority date, which can be catastrophic if anyone filed a similar mark in the interim.

Are trademark fees refundable if my application is refused?

No. The application fee is a processing fee, earned when the USPTO examines. A refusal, an abandonment, or a decision to walk away all leave the fee with the agency.

How do trademark fees compare to patent fees for an independent inventor?

Trademark fees are flat and modest at the front, roughly $350 per class, but never stop. Patent fees start higher, carry the real cost in attorney drafting at $8,000 to $20,000 for a utility application, and end at 20 years. The government portion of the patent side is documented in the USPTO patent basics section.

Before the first fee goes out the door, spend 45 minutes on the free search at tmsearch.uspto.gov. On the patent side, Enhance runs a $399 patent search that reports what the databases hold against your specific claims, and if you want a read on filing sequence against your launch date, start at the contact page.