USPTO Trademark Fee Changes Effective in Early 2025

In early 2025 the USPTO will apply 28 fee changes to its fee schedule, including 7 new fees and removing 4 current fees.

There will be two commencement dates for the new schedule, with changes to direct fees being effective from 18th January 2025 and changes to relevant Madrid Protocol fees being effective from 18th February 2025.

Notable Fee Changes
As detailed in the table below a number of official fees will increase, which notably includes the core application, post-registration and use declaration fees.

Currently applications filed directly with the USPTO (including foreign convention and non-convention applications) are made via the Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) and applications are charged according to whether the specification only uses pre-approved goods and services (TEAS Plus) or whether pre-approved wording is not used in at least one class (TEAS Standard). From 18th January 2025 all direct electronic applications will have the same base application fee, but new surcharges based on the complexity and completeness of their application can be charged on a per class basis. All surcharges will be calculated prior to the application being submitted with options to amend the application prior to submission so as to avoid any or all of the surcharges. However, surcharges can also be charged during examination if the examiner determines that information was missing at filing.

Using free-form text will incur an extra $200 per class. Each free-form class specification having more than 1,000 characters will be charged an extra $200 for each additional group of 1,000 characters beyond the first 1,000. To avoid this surcharge applicants will either need to stay below 1,000 characters per class or have long specifications that only use identifications of goods and/or services selected directly from the ID Manual. The surcharge fee for incomplete information will be $100 per class (not per missing item) and applies to applications missing information necessary for filing, such as the applicant’s name or address, a translation and transliteration of the mark, or description of the mark, etc. Later amendment of the translation and transliteration fields will not be charged unless the originally entered terms were clearly inappropriate. It will also apply to any previously filed TEAS applications that remain pending on or after 18th January 2025 if the application still fails to satisfy the completeness requirement.

The USPTO acknowledges that the goods and services options in the ID Manual are insufficient or too inaccurate for some industries. It allows suggestions for additions to the ID Manual to be made with responses given within a couple of working days and approved additions included in the weekly updates to the ID Manual.

For Madrid applications from 18th February 2025 the USPTO will apply a single fee as WIPO cannot currently collect filing surcharges. The fee will be set at a level that averages out what Madrid applicants would expect to pay if filing directly under the base application and surcharge system. A consequence of this is that where foreign applicants are happy to use only pre-approved terms the official fees will be cheaper if filed directly with the USPTO.

Fee Description                                                                    | Current fee   | New fee
TEAS Standard application, per class                                  |   $350           |     n/a
TEAS Plus application, per class                                          |  $250            |     n/a
Base application (direct), per class                                       |    n/a             |   $350
US designation fee filed with WIPO (Madrid), per class       |   $500           |   $600
Subsequent designation fee filed with WIPO (Madrid),        |   $500           |   $600
  per class                                                                              |                      |
Insufficient information (direct), per class                              |    n/a             |  $100
Using the free-form text box instead of pre-approved           |    n/a             |  $200
  goods and services, per class                                             |                      |
Each additional group of 1,000 characters in the free-form  |    n/a             |   $200
  text box beyond the first 1,000 (direct), per class               |                      |
Section 9 registration renewal application, per class            |   $300           |   $325
Section 8 declaration, per class                                            |   $225           |   $325
Section 15 declaration, per class                                          |   $200           |   $250
Section 71 declaration, per class                                          |   $225           |   $325
Renewal fee filed at WIPO, per class                                   |   $300           |   $325
Amendment to allege use (AAU), per class                          |   $100           |   $150
Statement of use (SOU), per class                                       |   $100           |   $150

Authors: Quinn Miller and Tom Robertson

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