At least every two years, the USPTO (the US Trademark and Patent Office) reviews their level fees. The fee review process entails a comprehensive assessment of the current fee schedule, accompanied by extensive research and analysis concerning potential amendments to the schedule.
On the 8th of May 2023, the Director of the USPTO was notified of the Office’s intention to increase trademark-related fees and submitted a preliminary trademark fee proposal.
At the same time, the USPTO intends to discontinue the current application filing options and introduce a new unified option.
We have examined the supporting documents the Director provided and are ready to provide you with more details on these events and how they are connected. We have summarized the information on the most important fees.
Please note that all the prices listed below are not implemented yet and exclude legal fees.
How will the trademark application fees change?
When the TEAS Standard and Plus application filing options are discontinued, a basic application fee of US$350 will be implemented.
TEAS Plus currently is US$250 per class; TEAS Standard is US$350 per class. TEAS Standard is used for the applications with descriptions of goods and services that are not picked from the Trademark ID Manual.
This means that our basic price for filing a trademark in the USA will increase by at least US$100 per class.
The USPTO intends to keep the option to use “non-standard descriptions” and is going to name such applications PREMIUM. Be prepared for an additional fee of US$200 added to the basic application fee. The total application fee is going to be US$550 for a premium application.
The USPTO proposes to set the limitation to 1000 characters per class in the application form. When using over the set amount of characters, an additional fee of US$200 for every 1000 characters per class will be applied.
Intent-to-use filing application connected fees
The USPTO proposes to increase fees for amendments to allege use (AAUs) and statements of use (SOUs), and create a new tiered fee structure for extensions of time to file an SOU.
AAU: US$100 per class –> US$200 per class
SOU: US$100 per class –> US$150 per class
It is possible to extend the deadline to file a Statement of use 5 times, and each extension costs US$125 per class. The USPTO proposes to leave the same fee of US$125 per class for the first, second, and third extensions; and adjust the fee for the fourth and fifth extensions to US$250 per class.
Maintenance fees
Your trademark is registered, congratulations! What fees are you expected to pay to keep your registration alive and valid?
The USPTO obliges trademark owners to file a Declaration of use between the 5th and 6th year of registration. The prices are going to change from US$225 per class to US$300 per class.
An optional Declaration of use that can be filed along with the Declaration that is used will cost US$250 per class; the current fee is US$200 per class.
The renewal cost of the trademark registration for each 10-year anniversary changes from US$300 per class to US$350 per class.
When to expect the adjusted fees implementation?
According to the Letter from the Director to TPAC from 8 May 2023, given the statutory and regulatory timeline for setting and adjusting fees, the anticipated time when the changes are in force is 2024.