The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has announced that it is adjusting existing trademark fees and introducing new trademark fees effective January 18, 2025 and implementing new patent fees and increasing various patent fees effective January 19, 2025.
Trademark Fees
The fee adjustments set or adjust 28 trademark fees, including the introduction of seven new fees. The agency is also discontinuing four fees.
Although the basic application fee of $350 (per class) for a US trademark owner will not change, the USPTO has added several new fees that may increase application filing costs.
The revised regulations will now require applicants to identify goods and/or services using identifications from the USPTO’s “Acceptable Identification of Goods and Services Manual” (ID Manual) which can be found at https://idm-tmng.uspto.gov/id-master-list-public.html . The USPTO is setting a new $200 fee per class for applicants who choose to enter descriptions of goods and services in the free‑form text box. To avoid the surcharge, applicants may use the ID Manual within the electronic application, which includes thousands of identifications.
Since most applications, especially foreign-origin applications, use identifications that are not in the ID Manual, the effective filing cost will be $550
In addition, a new $100 fee will be imposed if the information in an application is found to be incomplete, for example, if it doesn’t include a translation of a foreign language word.
When entering identifications in the free‑form text box, some applicants submit extensive lists of goods and/or services. The USPTO is setting a new fee of $200 for each additional group of 1,000 characters beyond the first 1,000 characters in the free‑form text box, including punctuation and spaces.
Routine fees to obtain and maintain a trademark registration (e.g., application filings, intent‑to‑use/use (ITU) filings, and post‑registration maintenance fees) will increase.
The following table displays fee changes for electronic filings. Paper filing costs are generally more expensive but are not shown since paper application filings are so rare.
|
Description |
Current Fee |
New Fee |
|
Base application, per class |
N/A |
$350 |
|
Amendment to allege use (AAU), per class (electronic) |
$100 |
$150 |
|
Statement of use (SOU), per class (electronic) |
$100 |
$150 |
|
Section 9 registration renewal application, per class (electronic) |
$300 |
$325 |
|
Section 8 declaration of use (DOU), per class (electronic) |
$225 |
$325 |
|
Section 15 incontestablity declaration, per class (electronic) |
$200 |
$250 |
|
Section 71 declaration, per class (electronic) |
$225 |
$325 |
|
Letter of protest |
$50 |
$150 |
|
Petition to the Director (electronic) |
$250 |
$400 |
|
Petition to revive an application (electronic) |
$150 |
$250 |
Patent Fees
The USPTO proposes will set or adjust more than 400 patent fees for undiscounted, small, and micro entities, including the introduction of more than 50 new fees. An undiscounted entity” includes all entities other than entities entitled to either a small or micro entity fee discount.
Fees for filing, search, examination, and issuance of utility patent and design patent applications will increase.
The combined total of filing, search, examination, and issue fees for a design application that proceeds to issuance would increase from $1,760 to $2,600 for undiscounted entity applications.
New fees for filing an Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) will be based on the total number of items of information submitted by the applicant or patent owner during the application or reexamination process. The proposed IDS fees are as follows:
- $200 for submissions exceeding 50 items of information.
- $500 for submissions exceeding 100 but not more than 200 items, less any previously paid IDS fees.
- $800 for submissions exceeding 200 items, less any previously paid IDS fees.
The undiscounted entity fee for filing a utility application with more than 20 claims will double to $200. The fee for multiple independent claims is also increased. Utility patent issue fees and maintenance fees will increase between 7% and 8%.
A surcharge of $2,700, in addition to the government filing fee, will apply to continuation and divisional applications filed 6 years or more after the earliest filing date. A surcharge of $4,000, in addition to the government filing fee, will apply to continuation and divisional applications filed 9 years or more after the earliest filing date.
The fee for filing a first Request for Continued Examination (RCE) will increase by 10%, raising it to $1,500. The fee for second and subsequent RCE filings will increase significantly to $2,860.
Fees for post‑grant proceedings will rise by 25%.
According to the USPTO, the patent fee structure is designed to encourage innovation by maintaining low barriers to entry into the patent system.