USPTO Trademark Fees in 2026: What the January 2025 Restructure Actually Costs

If you last looked at federal trademark filing fees in 2024, the picture you have in your head is out of date. On January 18, 2025, the USPTO implemented the biggest restructure of trademark application fees in more than a decade. It retired the longstanding TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard tiers, retired the underlying TEAS filing system itself, and replaced everything with a single base application fee plus a set of surcharges keyed to how you write the application.

The headline number is friendly: $350 per class, which is the same as the old TEAS Standard fee and only $100 more than the old TEAS Plus fee. The honest picture is more complicated. Most small-business filers who self-file without checking the new rules end up paying $550 to $850 per class once one or two surcharges trigger. The good news is that all of those surcharges are avoidable if you understand the new structure.

This guide walks through the full 2026 fee schedule, explains every surcharge, and gives a checklist for staying on the base fee.

The 30-Second Snapshot

What Actually Changed on January 18, 2025

Three things happened on the same day, and they're often described as one change. They're not — they interact differently.

1. 1

   The two-tier application structure ended

   Before 2025, you picked TEAS Plus ($250/class, stricter requirements) or TEAS Standard ($350/class, looser requirements). The USPTO merged both into a single base application at $350 per class. Owners who would have qualified for TEAS Plus pay $100 more for the same paperwork; owners who would have filed TEAS Standard pay the same number.

2. 2

   Three surcharges were added on top

   Most of the old TEAS Plus requirements migrated into surcharges that apply if you don't meet them. The surcharges are per class, so they stack quickly on multi-class applications. Details below.

3. 3

   TEAS itself was retired in favor of Trademark Center

   The Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS), the USPTO's filing portal since the early 2000s, was shut down for new applications on January 18, 2025. The replacement, Trademark Center, is a modern web app with auto-save, docketing, better validation, and a cleaner ID Manual picker. Existing TEAS filings in flight migrated over. Trademark Center is now the only place to file a new application.

The Three Surcharges, In Plain English

This is the part most owners get wrong. The $350 base fee assumes you do three things correctly at filing. If you miss any of them, the surcharge runs automatically — there is no warning at the time of payment, and there is no refund once the application is examined.

Surcharge #1: $100 per class — basic information missing

Applies when the application is filed without one of the basic-information items the USPTO would otherwise have to ask for in an Office Action. The most common triggers:

• Required disclaimer not included up front. If your mark contains a descriptive term that has to be disclaimed (e.g., "MADISON" in "MADISON COFFEE COMPANY"), you should disclaim it on the application itself.
• Translation not included for non-English wording in the mark.
• Transliteration not included for marks containing non-Latin characters.
• Section 1(a) date of first use and date of first use in commerce missing where required.
• Specimen not attached on a Section 1(a) (use-based) application.

Surcharge #2: $200 per class — free-form goods/services description

Applies when you describe your goods or services in free text rather than picking from the USPTO's pre-approved ID Manual. The ID Manual is a searchable database of standard descriptions the USPTO has already vetted; using ID Manual language avoids the surcharge and dramatically speeds up examination.

The temptation to write your own description is strong — your business "isn't quite like" the standard entries. Resist it. The standard entry usually covers what you do, and the $200/class surcharge plus the multi-month delay from a likely description-related Office Action will more than offset any precision gained.

Surcharge #3: $200 per additional 1,000 characters in the description

Applies to the goods/services description per class, beyond the first 1,000 characters. Most single-class applications come in well under this threshold, especially when you use ID Manual language. The surcharge starts to matter on broad applications — a coffee shop registering both "café services" and a long list of merchandise can blow past 1,000 characters quickly.

Multi-Class and Real-World Costs

The fee schedule is per class, so the total cost scales with how many classes of goods/services your mark covers. A few realistic scenarios:

The $1,950 scenario is not theoretical — we see it regularly when a coffee shop, a clothing brand, or a software product self-files across multiple classes with free-text descriptions copied from the company's website. It's also entirely avoidable.

Maintenance Fees Also Went Up

The Section 8 Declaration of Use, filed between the 5th and 6th anniversary of registration to confirm you're still using the mark, jumped from $225 to $325 per class. The Section 9 Renewal, due every ten years from registration, went from $300 to $325 per class. They're typically filed together at the 10-year mark, where the combined fee is now $650 per class versus the old $525.

The optional Section 15 Declaration of Incontestability, filed any time after five years of continuous use to lock in stronger protection, went from $200 to $250 per class.

The six-month grace-period surcharge for late maintenance filings is unchanged at $100 per class, applied on top of the regular fee.

Trademark Center Replaces TEAS

The shutdown of TEAS itself is more than a name change. The old TEAS forms were notoriously brittle — the entire flow would error out if a field validation failed three steps later, and the system had no real save state. Trademark Center fixes the worst of those problems:

• Auto-save — your progress persists between sessions instead of evaporating if you close the tab.
• Built-in docketing — you can see your applications and deadlines in one dashboard instead of having to email yourself every receipt.
• Better ID Manual integration — searching and picking pre-approved goods/services language is a first-class flow rather than a buried option.
• Stronger validation — many of the formatting errors that previously caused Office Actions are now caught at filing.

The migration is finished. If you bookmarked an old TEAS URL or have a saved draft from before January 18, 2025, anything in flight should have been moved automatically. New applications start at trademarkcenter.uspto.gov.

The Wisconsin Angle

Wisconsin trade name registration with the WDFI (Wis. Stat. ch. 132) costs $15 and gives you statewide notice and a presumption of priority of use. For a business operating only inside Wisconsin, that may be all you need. Our DBA guide walks the trade-name process in detail.

For anything that crosses state lines — online sales, regional expansion, licensing, e-commerce on national platforms — federal trademark registration is what actually protects the brand. The federal registration gives you:

• Nationwide priority from the filing date, not just Wisconsin priority from first use
• The right to use the ® symbol
• Constructive notice to every later user in the country
• Federal court jurisdiction and stronger remedies, including statutory damages and attorneys' fees in counterfeit cases
• A basis for international registration through the Madrid Protocol

The two systems are complementary, not competing. State registration is cheap, fast, and limited. Federal registration is the durable, scalable protection.

How to Stay on the Base Fee: A Pre-Filing Checklist

If you're self-filing, walk this list before you click submit:

1. 1

   Pick the right class (or classes)

   The international Nice classification has 45 classes — 34 for goods, 11 for services. Search the USPTO's ID Manual for terms describing what you sell. If your business covers multiple classes (e.g., you sell coffee and run a cafe), each class is a separate fee.

2. 2

   Use ID Manual language verbatim

   Copy the description straight from the ID Manual entry. Don't paraphrase, don't combine entries into a sentence. This single decision avoids the $200/class free-form surcharge and dramatically reduces the chance of a description-related Office Action.

3. 3

   Keep the description under 1,000 characters per class

   Almost always achievable with ID Manual language. If you're tempted to add more, ask whether the additional language actually broadens your protection or just describes the same goods in more detail. Usually it's the latter.

4. 4

   Add required disclaimers upfront

   If your mark has descriptive, geographic, or generic terms (e.g., "COFFEE" in a coffee-shop mark, "MADISON" in a Madison-based service mark), disclaim them on the application. This avoids the $100/class basic-info surcharge and removes a common Office Action trigger.

5. 5

   Provide translation/transliteration if applicable

   Any non-English word, or any non-Latin character, requires a translation and/or transliteration. Add it at filing.

6. 6

   For Section 1(a) filings, attach a clean specimen

   If you're filing based on actual use (not intent-to-use), you need a specimen showing the mark as used in commerce. Product packaging, a hangtag, a screen capture of the mark on your sales page, or marketing material clearly tied to the goods. Photographs of the mark on a t-shirt held at arm's length are not specimens.

Common Mistakes Under the New Structure

• Copying the description from your website. Your marketing copy is almost certainly free-form and almost certainly more than 1,000 characters. Both surcharges trigger.
• Filing under TEAS instructions found in old guides. Anything written before January 2025 that mentions "TEAS Plus" or a "$250 fee" is referencing a system that no longer exists.
• Skipping the clearance search to save time. A pre-filing search at the USPTO, on state registers, and across common-law uses (industry directories, Google, social media) catches conflicts before you spend $350 to learn about them via Office Action.
• Treating intent-to-use (Section 1(b)) as a free trial. Intent-to-use is a real route, but each Statement of Use filing past the 6-month window costs another $125 per class, and you have to actually start using the mark within five years or the application abandons.
• Forgetting that the surcharges are per class. A messy four-class application can rack up $1,000+ in surcharges on top of the $1,400 in base fees.

Sources & Statutory References

• USPTO, Summary of 2025 trademark fee changes
• Federal Register, Setting and Adjusting Trademark Fees During Fiscal Year 2025 (final rule, Nov. 18, 2024)
• USPTO Fee Schedule (current, PDF)
• USPTO, Trademark fee information
• USPTO Trademark Center (filing portal)
• USPTO Trademark updates & announcements
• Wis. Stat. ch. 132 — Wisconsin trademarks, service marks, and trade names (state-level alternative)
• Anchor Filings, Wisconsin DBA Guide — how state trade-name registration relates to federal trademark

Fee figures reflect the USPTO trademark fee schedule effective January 19, 2025 (last revised May 1, 2026). Statutes and rules are subject to change; verify current fees on USPTO.gov before filing. This article is general information, not legal advice.

Frequently Asked Questions