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The Zest

The USPTO Now Uses AI to Classify Applications. What Changes for You

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"The USPTO is using AI on trademark applications now? Does that change how mine gets reviewed?" Short answer: it changes an early, behind-the-scenes step, not the legal review. On March 19, 2026, the USPTO announced a tool it calls Class ACT, short for Trademark Classification Agentic Codification Tool. It assigns international classes, design search codes and pseudo marks to applications, and USPTO staff still review what it produces.

Here's what each of those pieces is, and what it means if you're filing.

What the USPTO announced

According to the release, Class ACT takes over some of the most time-consuming pre-processing work on new applications. It can assign international classes to applications that arrive unclassified, and it adds design search codes and pseudo marks, the data that makes a record searchable. The USPTO says humans at the agency still review that information.

The point is speed. The USPTO said the surge in trademark filings had stretched this manual work out to several months. The director framed the goal as cutting a five-month job down to five minutes, or even five seconds. The release ends by saying more AI trademark tools are coming soon.

That's the whole announcement. It's about sorting and coding applications so they can be found, not about deciding whether a mark gets registered.

What classification is

Every trademark application covers specific goods or services, and those get sorted into numbered classes under an international system called the Nice Classification. There are 34 classes for goods and 11 for services. Candles sit in one class, clothing in another, coaching in another.

Classes matter in two practical ways. Fees are charged per class: under the fee schedule that took effect January 18, 2025, the base application is $350 per class, and the full breakdown of what a trademark costs shows how that multiplies. Classes also organize the register, which shapes how records are searched.

What a class doesn't do is define your rights. The Trademark Act says the classification exists for the convenience of USPTO administration and does not limit or extend an applicant's rights. The rules ask applicants to list the class "if known," which is why some applications arrive without one, and someone at the USPTO has to assign it. That's the first job Class ACT now does.

What design search codes are

You can search a word. You can't type a picture into a search box. So when a mark includes a design, like a logo with a lemon or a sun, the USPTO assigns numbered design codes that describe the elements in it, using a system based on an international classification of figurative elements. Anyone looking for marks with a similar fruit, sun or shape can then find them by code, and so can the examining attorney looking for conflicts.

The USPTO has described design coding as an administrative matter that isn't reflected on the registration certificate. The codes don't change what you own. They do affect who finds your logo, and which logos turn up next to it.

What pseudo marks are

A pseudo mark is an extra entry the USPTO adds to a record so that unusual spellings and pictured words show up in searches. If a mark spells a word creatively, or shows a word as a picture, the pseudo mark records the plain version. A brand spelled KWIK KLEEN, for example, might carry a pseudo mark of QUICK CLEAN, so a search for the ordinary words finds it.

Like design codes, pseudo marks are administrative. They help people find marks. They don't grant or take away rights.

What changes for you, and what doesn't

What changes is timing. If the USPTO hits what it's describing, a new application is classified and coded much sooner after filing. That cuts both ways. Your filing becomes easier to find sooner, and so does everyone else's, especially logos, since a design can only be searched by its codes. It's one more reason a clearance search before you file is worth doing with care: the newest filings should be easier to catch.

What doesn't change is the substance. You still write your identification of goods and services, and that wording, not the class number, describes what the registration covers. Fees are still charged per class. And the legal examination isn't part of this announcement at all. An examining attorney still reviews the application on things like likelihood of confusion and descriptiveness, and an office action still comes with a deadline.

Two practical takeaways. First, choose your class and write your identification carefully yourself rather than leaving it to be sorted out later. Classification is faster now, but it can't fix a description that's too vague or too broad. Second, if your application includes a logo, it's worth confirming the design codes describe it accurately once they're on the record, since they shape who finds it. The USPTO has long accepted input on design codes and pseudo marks.

The USPTO says more AI tools are on the way. Each one deserves the same question: does it change a filing step, or the legal decision? This one changes a filing step.

If you're getting ready to file and want the class, the identification and the logo questions handled before the application goes in, 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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(No legal advice is given on the discovery call. It's a chance to tell me what you're building and hear how the process works.)

Sources

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

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