USPTO trademark fee restructuring: What applicants need to know

Key takeaways

• The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) final trademark fee rule restructures and increases many application, intent-to-use, renewal, and maintenance fees, and replaces the former TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard options with a single base application. 
• The USPTO adopted the fee changes to support its projected budget, encourage more complete applications, and improve examination efficiency. 
• The new structure adds per-class surcharges for certain incomplete applications and for free-form identifications of goods and services. 
• Applicants should use the USPTO’s Trademark ID Manual when it supports an appropriate identification and conduct thorough prefiling diligence to identify required information. 
• Trademark owners should revisit filing strategies to manage new costs, minimize delays, and preserve appropriate trademark protection. 

The USPTO issued a final trademark rule on November 18, 2024, that increases application filing, renewal, and other trademark-related fees effective January 18, 2025.

The USPTO’s new fee structure is intended to not only raise revenue consistent with the USPTO’s expected budget over the coming years, but also to encourage more complete filings and streamline the examination process. This increase in fees is coupled with a new application filing center with a single application option, discontinuing the TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard filing options.

Trademark practitioners should be more proactive in gathering information for applications to avoid various surcharges that have been established. Trademark owners may also need to modify their filing approaches to reduce both application costs and review time. Here, we evaluate the USPTO rule change on fees, and propose filing approaches for trademark practitioners to minimize the impact of the fee adjustments while maintaining the defensive value of trademark applications.

What did USPTO change its trademark fee structure?

Under its authority granted by the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act and based on a biennial review of fees, costs, and revenues, the USPTO established certain fee adjustments. The USPTO determined that these adjustments would provide the agency with sufficient financial resources to facilitate the effective administration of the U.S. trademark system and to accomplish its mission to drive innovation and deliver high-quality trademark examination and review.

The USPTO conducted public hearings and a formal rulemaking process beginning in early 2023. The final rule was published in the Federal Register on November 18, 2024, and took effect on January 18, 2025.

What do trademark applicants need to know?

The USPTO's final rule sets or adjusts 28 trademark fees, including the addition of seven new fees and the discontinuance of four fees. Under the new fee schedule, routine fees to obtain and maintain a trademark registration (e.g., application filings, intent-to-use filings, and post-registration maintenance fees) will be restructured, resulting in increased overall application fees depending on the application particulars, along with increased maintenance fees. 

The tables below reflect some of the most significant fee changes that are likely to affect the trademark practice.

New application fees

Adjusted post-registration and other fees

What are key changes to the USPTO application process?

The USPTO has removed the bifurcated application process for TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard applications, replacing them with a single base application with the same base cost as the current TEAS Standard application.

Key effects of the new application structure are discussed below.

1. New identification-related fees

In order to persuade users to use the Trademark Next Generation ID Manual (ID Manual), the USPTO is instituting a number of identification-based fees.

For one, using custom identifications (i.e., free-form text) will come with a surcharge of $200 per class. Additionally, and only when using custom identifications, each additional group of 1,000 characters beyond the first 1,000 characters in the free-form text box, including punctuation and spaces, will incur an added fee of $200 per class.

The USPTO has noted in the final rule that the fee will not apply if the application exceeds the character limit based on an examiner’s required amendments or when adding exclusionary language (e.g., to avoid opposition) later in prosecution.

The USPTO stated it has no plans to substantially expand the ID Manual but noted that trademark owners can suggest additions for USPTO review. In individual cases, trademark owners should consider taking advantage of additions to the ID Manual for their goods and services, if available.

2. Insufficient information surcharge

The information required for a base application is the same as the current TEAS Plus requirements. If an application is missing any of the required information, it will be subject to an “insufficient information” surcharge of $100 per class. Importantly, this fee will be assessed based on information in an initial filing and cannot be avoided by correction in preliminary amendments.

Missing any of the following information in the initial filing could trigger this fee during prosecution:

• Applicant's name and domicile address
• Applicant’s legal entity
• Citizenship of each individual applicant, general partner, joint venture member, or sole proprietor or the state or country of incorporation or organization of each juristic applicant
• One or more bases for filing that satisfy all the requirements of 37 C.F.R. § 2.34 (e.g., verification statements, priority claims)
  • Note: For a Section 1(a) filing, the mark on the specimen must be “substantially exact” to the mark on the drawing.
• Compliance with 37 C.F.R. § 2.86 for applications claiming one or more goods/services class (e.g., filing fee, filing bases)
• Filing fees for each class of goods or services
• A properly signed verification statement
• A digitized image of a mark not claiming standard characters (in color if applicable)
• A standard character mark written in the USPTO’s standard character set
• A statement naming the color(s) and describing where the color(s) appear on a mark and a claim that the color(s) is a feature of the mark
• A description of any nonstandard character marks
• English translation of any non-English wording in the mark
• Name and likeness consent statements, both positive (i.e., name refers to a living individual) and negative (i.e., name does not refer to a living individual)
• Transliteration of non-Latin characters in the mark
• Prior registration claims when owner name does not match
• Compliance with § 2.42 for concurrent-use applications
• Designation of an attorney as applicant’s representative for applicants not domiciled within the United States

In response to concerns during the rulemaking process that many of these requirements may be improperly applied by an examining attorney, the USPTO stated that applicants may respond with arguments to overcome insufficient information fee requests. The USPTO also noted that applicants can file complaints based on inconsistent examinations with the USPTO’s Consistency Initiative. 

Further, the fees are applicable in cases where an applicant may have been unaware of a requirement, for example, where a mark includes a term that translates from a foreign language and no translation is provided. The USPTO noted that the fees could also be charged even if one of these requirements was corrected in a preliminary amendment that was filed prior to the examining attorney’s review.

What should trademark filers do now?

In light of the new USPTO rule, it is more important than ever to work with experienced counsel for filing trademark applications in order to prevent additional fees and delays that could be avoided through advance diligence.

Below are some recommendations for trademark filers:

1. Conduct clearance searches: Given that more trademark filers are likely to choose standard descriptions from the USPTO’s ID Manual, more marks may be applied and registered for more generalized goods and services. Broader filings may lead to increased citations based on future registrations and applications made using standard descriptions. While the extent of this potential impact on register conflict due to standard descriptions is unclear, clearance searches can provide trademark owners with information needed to reduce conflict with earlier federal filings. In the context of a greater number of filings that may rely on the USPTO’s standard descriptions from the ID Manual, pre-filing searches are likely to be more valuable.
2. Customize filing strategies: Under the new rules, certain filers may benefit from the broader ID Manual descriptions, while other trademark owners may find it beneficial to revise their description language given the new surcharges for lengthy descriptions. In other cases, maintaining existing descriptions may be valuable to avoid any loss in coverage. Trademark counsel can help to decide what is most important based on proposed or current offerings and/or business plans.
3. Propose ID Manual additions: While it may be possible to avoid certain surcharges using descriptions for the USPTO’s ID Manual, the ID Manual may lack appropriate descriptions, particularly for new technologies or highly specialized goods and services. Trademark owners in new or unique industries should consider proposing new identification of goods or services through the USPTO’s dedicated email address for ID Manual suggestions.
4. Complete thorough prefiling research: Trademark owners should aim to provide as much information as possible about a mark to counsel before seeking registration, and counsel should conduct their own research to avoid new fees based on missing information. Under the new base application system, missing certain application requirements may generate additional surcharges. Some of these requirements could be easy to overlook, such as English translations of non-English wording, prior registration claims when an owner does not match, and name and likeness consent statements (including negative statements in cases where the name in the mark does not refer to a living individual). As an example, some marks may include wording that has a meaning in a less common language, and the applicant may not know of or have intended this meaning. In that case, not including the translation statement in the initial filing could lead to a per-class surcharge. Accordingly, it is that much more important to research the mark before seeking federal registration. If trademark owners are aware that their proposed filing will require any of the information highlighted above, gathering it up front will maximize efficiency and help avoid surcharges. 

What's next?

The changes to the fee schedule reflected in the final rule demonstrate a continued effort by the USPTO to hold trademark applicants to high standards, minimize incomplete applications, and streamline the trademark application examination process. The changes may cause an increase in expenses for certain applicants, particularly those trademark owners with complex technologies or specialized goods and services.

Companies and brand owners should be familiar with these changes and consult legal counsel before filing trademark applications to develop effective protection strategies and avoid unnecessary surcharges.

For any questions regarding the new USPTO fee schedule and how to navigate its changes, please reach out to members of Ashurst Perkins Coie’s Trademark, Copyright, Internet, and Advertising team.