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The Zest

What It Costs to Renew a Trademark, Class by Class

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The ten-year renewal of a US trademark registration costs $650 per class in USPTO fees when you file online and on time. That's two filings made together: a $325 declaration that you're still using the mark and a $325 renewal application. Before you get there, a separate $325 per class declaration is due between the fifth and sixth year.

Those are government fees only. Late filing, optional filings and cleanup can add to them, and if you hire someone to prepare the filings, that fee is separate. Here's how the numbers stack up.

The fees at a glance

These are the USPTO's fees for electronic filing, per class.

  • Section 8 declaration of use: $325
  • Section 9 renewal application: $325
  • Section 8 and Section 9 filed together (the ten-year filing): $650
  • Section 15 declaration of incontestability (optional): $250
  • Section 8 and Section 15 filed together: $575
  • Grace period surcharge, Section 8: $100
  • Grace period surcharge, Section 9: $100

Every one of those is charged per class. A class is one of the categories your goods or services are sorted into, and your registration lists the classes it covers. A registration with two classes pays double. Three classes, triple.

The fee schedule also lists higher amounts for paper filings. I've left those out.

What "renewal" actually includes

People say "renewal" to mean everything it takes to keep a registration alive. The USPTO treats that as two different filings with two different jobs.

The Section 8 declaration is a sworn statement that the mark is still in use in commerce for the goods and services in the registration, filed with proof of that use. It's due for the first time between the fifth and sixth year after registration. This filing isn't technically a renewal at all, but skip it and the registration is canceled.

The Section 9 renewal is the true renewal. A registration lasts ten years and can be renewed for ten-year periods, with no limit on how many. Each time, a new Section 8 declaration is due in the same window, which is why the USPTO has a combined form and why the ten-year cost is $650 and not $325.

So over the first ten years, a one-class registration costs $975 in USPTO maintenance fees: $325 at the five-to-six-year mark and $650 at the nine-to-ten-year mark. After that it's $650 per class every ten years, for as long as the fee schedule stays where it is. The USPTO has changed its fees before, so check the current schedule when your window opens.

I've kept the dates short here because the deadlines have their own article: Your Trademark Registration Can Die of Neglect.

One exception is worth flagging. If your US registration came through the Madrid Protocol, based on an international registration, the pattern is different. You file use declarations with the USPTO under a different section of the law, and the renewal itself is handled through the World Intellectual Property Organization, not the USPTO.

What it costs if you're late

Each deadline is followed by a six-month grace period. You can still file during it, but there's a surcharge of $100 per class for each filing that's late.

For the five-to-six-year filing, that makes the Section 8 declaration $425 per class in the grace period, or $675 per class if you're combining it with a Section 15 declaration.

For the ten-year filing, both pieces are late at once, so both surcharges apply. The combined Section 8 and Section 9 filing in the grace period is $850 per class.

After the grace period ends, a late fee no longer fixes it. The registration is canceled or expires. If you still want a registration after that, it generally means starting over with a new application and the application fee.

The optional $250: Section 15

A Section 15 declaration claims what the law calls incontestability. Once a mark on the Principal Register has been in continuous use for five consecutive years after registration, and certain other conditions are met, the owner can file it. Under the Lanham Act, an incontestable registration is conclusive evidence of the mark's validity and of the owner's exclusive right to use it, subject to a list of defenses in the statute.

It's optional. No registration is canceled for skipping it. The fee is $250 per class, and many owners file it together with the first Section 8 declaration for a combined $575 per class. It can also be filed on its own later, once the five-year requirement is met.

Whether it's worth $250 depends on how much the mark matters to the business and how likely a challenge is. It isn't available for marks on the Supplemental Register.

Costs that catch people off guard

A few fees sit outside the headline numbers.

Deleting goods or services costs nothing if you do it before you file the declaration. Deleting them after you've filed the declaration, and before the USPTO accepts it, costs $250 per class. That matters because the declaration says the mark is in use for everything listed. If you've stopped selling some of the items in your registration, the cheaper moment to remove them is before you file. I wrote about what counts as acceptable proof in the article on specimens.

Audits use the same fee. The USPTO audits some registrations after a Section 8 declaration is filed and asks for proof of use for more of the listed items. If you can't provide it and items come out of the registration, the fee is $250 for each class with deletions.

Deficiencies can carry a surcharge. If a filing is missing something and you correct it after the filing window has closed, the fee schedule lists a $100 deficiency fee. Corrections made while the window is still open generally don't carry it. This is one reason filing early in the window is cheaper than filing on the last day.

Doing it yourself, hiring someone, and the invoices to ignore

A US-based owner can file all of these personally and pay only the USPTO fees. The parts that take care are confirming every listed item is still in use and submitting proof the USPTO will accept.

If you hire a lawyer, the lawyer's fee is added to the government fees above. Ask whether a quote includes them.

Be careful with anything that arrives in the mail looking like a bill. The USPTO doesn't send invoices. Private companies do, and the USPTO warns that some of those notices push services that aren't required. The amounts in this article are the government's numbers. Anything above them is someone's service charge. More on that is in the article on trademark scams.

If you have a filing coming due and want to talk about it, you can see how the search and filing packages work on the services page, and the FAQs page answers most of what comes up before a first call.

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Sources

This article is general information, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.

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