A number of the fees are increases in existing fees, such as Statements of Use and post-registration maintenance fees, to account for inflation and other costs factors.

After a review and comment period that took place in 2023 and early 2024, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued its final rule implementing new fees that will go into effect on January 18, 2025, for most trademark filings, and on February 18, 2025, for Madrid filings.

A number of the fees are increases in existing fees, such as Statements of Use and post-registration maintenance fees, to account for inflation and other costs factors. Others are new fees that purport to address the increased cost of review of applications that do not use pre-approved goods or services from the Trademark ID Manual. Currently, applicants can file new (non-Madrid) applications as either TEAS Standard ($350 per class) or TEAS Plus ($250 per class), with applicants having to meet more stringent filing requirements to qualify for the lower TEAS Plus fee. Part of the rationale for the lower TEAS Plus fee is the reduction in manual processing required and overall greater efficiency for such applications, including the use of pre-approved specifications pulled from the Trademark ID Manual. Under the new rule, the USPTO has replaced the TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard fees “with a single electronic filing option and corresponding base application fee plus new surcharges based on application attributes.” The differential between applications that use specifications from the Trademark ID Manual versus free-form specifications will now increase to $200 per class.

In addition, in order to incentivize applicants to file applications that conform to the old TEAS Plus requirements, the USPTO will charge an additional $200 fee per class for each group of 1,000 characters beyond the first 1,000 characters where the description of goods/services is not pulled from the Trademark ID Manual.

The USPTO has also introduced a new fee for “insufficient information.” The fee will be $100 per class for any application that is missing or has incomplete information in any of 19 categories. Again, these are categories of information that would be required to file a TEAS Plus application, including applicant’s name and domicile address, legal entity and citizenship, a description of the mark for nonstandard characters, an English translation of non-English wording and transliteration of non-English characters, among others. Since some of the requested information may be subjective, an examiner may charge a fee for insufficient information in connection with an office action. Applicants will have an opportunity to argue against the imposition of the fee in responding to the action―though this, in turn, may increase attorney fees for responses. The USPTO has indicated that if an application would have met the TEAS Plus requirements before January 18, it would not be subject to insufficiency fees.

In addition to the increased post-registration fees, the USPTO will also increase Petition fees and Letter of Protest fees. The Letter of Protest fees, initially instituted in 2021, will be increased from $50 to $150. 

The newly implemented application fees will impact applicant’s filing strategies and introduce uncertainties into the budgeting process. Trademark filing and prosecution costs are likely to increase, particularly for applicants in cutting-edge fields where appropriate descriptions do not yet exist in the Trademark ID Manual. Even for more standardized offerings, applicants will need to weigh the benefits of selecting a pre-approved identification versus the possibly broader protection that may be obtained by incurring surcharges to allow the use of longer, more custom descriptions.

In light of the impending increase in fees and the potential uncertainty around budgeting for these new fees, potential applicants may wish to consider whether to file new applications in advance of the January 18, 2025, effective date.

Summary Charts of New and Increased Fees

For More Information

If you have any questions about this Alert, please contact Mark Lerner, any of the attorneys in our Intellectual Property Practice Group or the attorney in the firm with whom you are regularly in contact.

Disclaimer: This Alert has been prepared and published for informational purposes only and is not offered, nor should be construed, as legal advice. For more information, please see the firm's full disclaimer.