Let’s talk pricing for trademarks. We’ll provide an example budget for getting and maintaining a U.S. trademark for a U.S. company. Then, we’ll break down the factors that influence the cost to get a trademark registered. We’ll answer key questions about what drives trademark cost up or down, and what makes the cost of getting a trademark registered expensive or cheap.

Even though each case is different, it is possible to budget for getting and maintaining a trademark in the United States.

Before We Get Into Pricing . . .

There are two things you need to understand before considering what a trademark costs: how law firm pricing works and how the process of getting a trademark works.

Quick Primer on Law Firm Cost

You’ll see most legal matters billed on one of three different bases: contingency billing, hourly billing, and flat fee billing.

• Contingency billing is where the law firm is paid a percentage of damages awarded in a case. No law firm will offer to get a trademark on contingency because there are no damages involved.
• Hourly billing is where the law firm is paid based on an hourly rate, per attorney or a blended rate, multiplied by the number of hours worked (usually measured in 1/10th of an hour increments). This is the most common form of legal billing.
• Flat fee billing is where the law firm charges a set price for a set scope of work, or a phase of a scope of work. They are are best used for projects where the process is definable, like flat fee trademark registration.

Check out this video if you want to learn more about these and when they’re used broadly for IP legal services. Now, let’s get into what drives trademark registration cost up and down.

How To Get a Trademark

Let’s say there are six phases in the life of a trademark registration:

1. Exploration. You’ll share the brand element (e.g., the name, logo, color, sound, trade dress, etc.) with your lawyer, who will do some initial due diligence to understand the brand, the brand element and how you’re using it (or proposing to use it), review the goods and services being offered, review distinctiveness, and optionally, perform a knockout or clearance search.
2. Application. Once the “go” decision is made, your lawyer will finalize class selections, goods/services definitions, and prepare the application.
3. Examination. The trademark application will then advance through examination, receiving “non-final” or “final” office actions, or suspensions. If you do receive an office action, your trademark lawyer will analyze the office action, and prepare and file responses with arguments or amendments.
4. Publication. Once the trademark application completes examination, it will be published for 30 days. During this time, any member of the public who thinks they might be damaged by registration of your mark can file a Notice of Opposition or an extension on the time to do it.
5. Finalization. Once the application is allowed, your trademark lawyer will perform a final review of the application, submit your Statement of Use if not already done, and your trademark will subsequently register.
6. Maintenance. Finally, you must keep the trademark registration active. The United States requires additional renewal fees be paid at intervals to keep a trademark registered.

Litigation, including enforcement and defense, comes into play during the Maintenance phase. There is plenty of literature out there focused on trademark litigation, but in this post, we’re focused on the costs for a trademark registration itself.

An Example Budget for Registering a Trademark

To set up the rest of this post, let’s look at an example budget for registering a trademark embodied by a company’s name. For the sake of this budget, we’ll assume this is an original application prepared and managed by a law firm, it’s an “intent-to-use” application, a clearance search is done during the exploration phase, and it receives one office action before registration. This example budget does not account for opposition, enforcement, or defense costs.

What Drives Trademark Cost Up?

Several factors can increase the cost of a trademark application:

• Multiple Classes. The USPTO charges fees based on the number of classes of goods or services in your application. For example, filing a TEAS Standard application costs $350 per class. If your trademark covers multiple classes, the fees multiply linearly.
• Intent-to-Use: If you file an intent-to-use application, you will need to pay additional fees for filing a Statement of Use as well as for extensions of time to file the Statement of Use if it is not ready when due. Each extension request costs $125 per class, and filing a statement of use costs $100 per class.
• Uncommon Brand Element Type: Expect higher costs for uncommonly-registered brand elements, such as colors, sounds, smells, or, though more common but also complex, trade dress. Examination of such elements is more complex and may involve more back-and-forth with the Trademark Office.
• Legal Fees: Hiring a trademark attorney to prepare and prosecute the application is the greatest driver of cost, even though applicants may find it well worth it because trademark law notoriously gets very complex very quickly. Legal fees must be weighed against the value-add of having an experienced and licensed professional quarterbacking the case.
• International Filing Strategy: If you plan to extend your trademark application to multiple international jurisdictions, you will incur costs related to retaining foreign counsel and foreign government fees.

What Drives Trademark Cost Down?

Conversely, several factors can help reduce the cost of a trademark application:

• TEAS Plus Application: Opting for the TEAS Plus application can save money. This option costs $250 per class but requires stricter adherence to USPTO guidelines.
• Single Class Applications: Limiting your application to a single class of goods or services can reduce costs. Each additional class adds to the overall fee.
• Portfolio Triage: If your company has a diligent filing strategy, you may need to pair it with a regular culling of your portfolio at intervals to remove, license, or sell trademarks you don’t use anymore.
• DIY Applications: Drafting and filing the application yourself can cost as little as the USPTO fees. While a typical application with no issues can be a straightforward endeavor, trademark law notoriously becomes very complex very quickly and there are few opportunities to remedy mistakes made in an application.

Beyond what drives cost up and down, there’s also the question of what makes trademarks expensive or what makes a cheap trademark registration. If you’re researching the cost to get a trademark for a startup, you might find quite a bit of variation (if you can find pricing at all). You might find pricing all of the way from $100’s plus filing fees to $1,000’s.

What Makes Trademarks Expensive?

Trademark registrations can become expensive due to several reasons:

• Not Having a Strategy. If you don’t have a strategy for your IP portfolio, you’re running the risk of wasting effort in a direction that doesn’t add value to the company. When you have an IP strategy in place, decisions surrounding IP become significantly easier, and you’ll waste less time and money.
• Oppositions: During the publication period, anyone who believes they may be damaged by the registration of your trademark may oppose your registration. The cost of defending a trademark opposition can range anywhere from $5,000 if resolved early to $100,000 if the opposition pursues the case through final decision. Most firms will work on these cases hourly due to the variability, but some firms like Stake are able to quote flat fees for phases of the case as it progresses if preferred by the client.
• Using a Big-Market Law Firm: Law firms in large legal markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or San Francisco naturally need to charge more in fees to cover both the cost of doing business in those markets and their attorneys’ and staff’s the cost of living. U.S. attorneys practicing U.S. federal trademark law, like patent attorneys, can prosecute U.S. trademark applications or handle oppositions or cancellations for any client in the world.
• Omnibus Applications: Sometimes an applicant will want to cram a large goods/services definition into a single trademark application. While you can file and prosecute large trademark application, this kind of “omnibus” application may cause examination to take longer and you may incur more cost.
• International Protection: Seeking trademark protection in multiple jurisdictions adds to the cost due to additional filing, translation, and legal fees. If you’re protecting your trademark in jurisdictions where you don’t expect to have competitors, in which you don’t expect to have competitors, this may be expense with little ROI. This is one of the reasons to regularly review your IP portfolio and cull the applications and registrations that are not advantageous for your company to prosecute and maintain.

What Makes Trademarks Cheap?

On the flip side, trademark applications can be cheap in cases where there is highly-constrained work done by the person writing and managing it. For example, the factors that can cause a trademark application to tend toward cheap include:

• No Counseling or Recommendations. Some attorneys will merely report on what is happening in the case, without translating it out of the highly-technical terms of the trademark law, without explaining it, and without recommending what to do next. If you’re a sophisticated player when it comes to trademarks (like in-house IP counsel), this might be acceptable, but for most startup clients, this just creates more questions.
• Over-Constrained Scope. Get specific with your trademark attorney on scope of work, and you might find out that there are very tight boundaries on what they’ll do during your trademark project. While scope limits are essential in any legal project, sometimes the constraints are very tight and could hurt you in the long run.

As you can see, there’s quite a bit that goes into the cost of getting a trademark registered. Understanding these factors can help you better navigate the trademark application process, figure out what kind of assistance you need, and manage costs effectively.

A Flat-Fee-First Model Built for Startups

Stake helps startup teams who are ready to build out their IP portfolio to take their company to the next stage of growth. We employ flat fees for most aspects of IP law, and we realize that not every trademark case is the same. Click on “Contact Us” if you’d like to schedule a time to talk about your startup’s IP strategy.