After a lengthy public comment and review process, the US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) announced trademark fee increases effective January 18, 2025. The goal of PTO fee setting is to provide sufficient financial resources to facilitate the effective administration of the US intellectual property system. The PTO aspires to recover aggregate costs to:
- Finance the PTO’s mission, strategic goals, and priorities.
- Enable financial sustainability.
- Promote efficient operations and filing behaviors.
- Align fees with the costs of services provided.
- Encourage access to the trademark system for all stakeholders.
The fees for filing a new trademark application via either the Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) or TEAS Plus will remain unchanged: $350 per class for a TEAS standard application and $250 per class for a TEAS Plus application for as long as TEAS remains available (and then using the Beta site discussed below). However, the PTO will institute surcharges for applications that are incomplete or contain custom identifications of goods or services. These application surcharges are intended to encourage more complete applications, which will improve examination efficiency and help reduce pendency.
Since the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is currently unable to collect surcharges, the PTO will raise the fee for WIPO Madrid Trademark Applications to $600 per class.
The PTO will also raise the fees for post-registration filings to offset higher processing costs for these filings and continue balancing the cost of base applications.
The PTO has not increased the filing fees in connection with intent to use filings since 2002, although the time to examine such filings has increased exponentially because of the need to examine questionable specimens. Those fees are now set to increase as follows:
The fees for requesting an extension of time are unchanged.
Finally, the number of petitions and protests have increased. The PTO will attempt to recover more of the cost of processing petitions and protests as follows:
For further details, including a complete list of the fee increases, click here.
The PTO also announced that as of January 18, 2025, filers will no longer be able to use TEAS. After that date, filings can only be made using the PTO’s Beta website, introduced earlier in 2024. Until then, filers can still use either option. This registration filing change follows the PTO’s August 2024 introduction of the Trademark Trial & Appeal Board Center Beta website for filing notices of opposition with the Board.
