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As of January 19, 2025, many of the official fees related to transactions at the USPTO (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office) will see a significant increase that will impact innovative owners who desire to protect their intellectual property assets.
Discussions of patent fee increases: https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/news-updates/patent-fee-changes-take-effect-january-19; and https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/performance-and-planning/fee-setting-and-adjusting
A summary of trademark fee increases: https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/fees-payment-information/summary-2025-trademark-fee-changes
For comparison purposes, here is the current patent and trademark fee schedule that will be outdated on January 19, 2025: https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/fees-and-payment/uspto-fee-schedule
Examples of significantly higher patent fees include (large entity example):
Design patent application filing and search fees will go from $380 to $600, and issue fee to go from $740 to $1300
Excess utility patent application claim fees will see significant increases: each claim over 20 will double to be US$200 and each independent claim over three will see an increase of 25% to US$600 per claim
Request for Continued Examination (RCE) filing fees will increase:
First RCE: US$1,500 (+10% over current fee)
Second and subsequent RCE: US$2,860 (+43% over current fee)
Petitions associated with unintentional delay of > 2 years: US$3000
The USPTO is also imposing a surcharge for filing continuing patent applications “late” in their 20-year term:
Continuing Application Surcharge, filed ≥ 6 years after earliest benefit date: US$2,700
Continuing Application Surcharge, filed ≥ 9 years after earliest benefit date: US$4,000
On the trademark side, the two types of application fees — Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) Plus at $250 and TEAS Standard at $350 — have been replaced by a single base application fee of $350. In addition, new fees characterized as "surcharges" for filing trademark applications are being introduced. The official line for the motivation for these new surcharge fees is "to encourage more complete applications, which will improve examination efficiency and help reduce pendency."
Surcharge Fee description | Current fee | New fee |
Insufficient information (sections 1 and 44), per class | n/a | $100 |
Free-form text instead of standard description of the Trademark ID Manual to describe goods/services (sections 1 and 44), per class | n/a | $200 |
Each additional group of 1,000 characters in the free-form text description beyond the first 1,000 (sections 1 and 44), per affected class | n/a | $200 |
What these new fees mean is that a trademark application that does not utilize the standard descriptions in the Trademark ID Manual will have a filing fee of $550 compared to $350 previously. Further, the USPTO hopes that the new surcharge fees will discourage the practice of including a long slog of goods/services in the description.
Post-registration maintenance fees will also see an increase:
Fee description | Current fee | New fee |
Section 9 registration renewal application, per class | $300 | $325 |
Section 8 declaration, per class | $225 | $325 |
Section 15 declaration, per class | $200 | $250 |
Section 71 declaration, per class | $225 | $325 |
Other fees associated with trademark prosecution, such as petition fees and intent-to-use fees will also see significant increases.
Wei Wei Jeang is recognized by her peers in the 31ˢᵗ edition of The Best Lawyers in America® for exceptional work in Patent Law and Trademark Law for 2025.
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