Upcoming USPTO Fee Changes & Filing Strategies

It’s official – the USPTO’s proposal to increase trademark fees has been released and will take effect on January 18, 2025. These changes will increase many trademark fees and has the potential to dramatically increase fees for new applications.

The increase in the filing fees for new applications is difficult to predict, as the USPTO has revealed that there will be 19 examination points (e.g., mark description, translation of mark, ownership of prior registrations, consent of an individual) that can trigger deficiency surcharges of $100 PER CLASS. You can find the full list of these datapoints at https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-26644/p-459. These fees are in addition to the fees for not using the pre-approved goods and services list. The base application fee will be $350 per class.  However, not using the pre-approved goods/services found in the ID Manual will cost applicants $200 per class, and any recitation containing non-approved goods/services exceeding 1000 characters will be $200 per class for EACH group of 1000 additional characters.  It is noteworthy that the “character count” includes spaces and punctuation! The pre-approved list can be found at https://idm-tmng.uspto.gov/id-master-list-public.html.
 
If you are considering filing a new application, we strongly recommend that you do so immediately, to avoid these surcharges. For applications after January 18, we strongly advise using the USPTO’s Trademark ID Manual to avoid incurring significant additional charges and asking for our sheet about information to avoid surcharges.
 
For maintenance documents, the official fees for renewals will increase from $525 per class to $650 per class. The official fees for a Declaration of Continued Use will increase from $225 per class to $325 per class. The optional Declaration of Incontestability will increase from $200 per class to $250 per class. As such, if the maintenance period has already opened for your trademark registration, or will open before January 18, we recommend filing your maintenance documents as soon as possible to avoid these fee increases.
 
For detailed information and strategy considerations, please ask for our USPTO Fee Changes and Filing Strategies Memo, which can also be found in the Client Section of our website.