By: Gavin Strube, Esq.
2025: New Year … New USPTO?
2025 is upon us, bringing with it a new presidential administration, a biannual review of filing fees at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and some uncertainty about how the office will adjust in the coming months. Let’s dive in and see what the new year has in store for trademark owners and their precious intellectual property.
Fee Increases
Every two years, the USPTO examines its filing fees and determines if any adjustments need to be made. After a quiet cycle in 2022-2023, the USPTO has instituted aggressive fee increases to take effect on January 18, 2024. The USPTO’s rationale is straightforward. The cost to examine and process trademark and patent applications has continued to increase, and filing fees, which reportedly cover roughly half of the USPTO’s operating expenses, have not changed appreciably in four years.
While 28 separate trademark filing fees have increased, the most obvious and dramatic increase has been to the initial application fees. Gone is the distinction between “Standard” and “Plus” applications. Now a trademark application incurs a filing fee of $350 per class of goods and services. However, those applications must be selected from a pre-generated “menu” of goods and services. The majority of applications filed by Greenspoon Marder’s IP team require drafting unique identifications of goods and services. Doing so now incurs an additional filing fee of $200, and if your description is too long, additional fees can apply on top of that!
This reinforces the importance of seeking skilled guidance when considering trademark applications. If you try and use the pre-selected “menu” of goods, you could have to amend it later (and pay the $200) or end up with the USPTO identifying a conflicting registration even if the reality is there is no conflict whatsoever! If you write your own description of goods and you aren’t judicious in editing or are used to European trademark procedures that detail long, overly detailed descriptions of goods, the fees could just keep piling up.
The Greenspoon Marder IP team has decades of cumulative experience in preparing and prosecuting trademark applications and dealing with the USPTO. Reach out to us today for a consultation on your trademark to avoid frustrating or expensive mishaps with your applications.
New Administration, New Policies
As President-elect Trump nears his inauguration, a great deal of attention is aimed at his cabinet picks – how his team will manage the USPTO is far from the spotlight, and possibly, rightly so. President Trump is an advocate for private businesses, and the cultivation of strong intellectual property protections is of incredible value to businesses of all sizes (as well as individuals). On the surface, all signs point to an approach akin to “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” This aligns with President-elect Trump’s approach during his first term, which was for the large part hands off.
However, one element of his incoming administration rightly concerns employees of the USPTO. Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and “DOGE” have made it clear that they oppose “work from home” programs and want to force all federal employees to return to their respective offices.
However, there is a significant complicating factor here for the USPTO. The USPTO instituted its first telework program in 1997 and now offers remote work to all trademark examining attorneys after an initial term of working in the main office in Alexandria, Virginia. Today, there are approximately 13,000 USPTO employees working remotely, including many trademark examiners across the United States. Not only can many of these employees simply not uproot their lives and move to Virginia, but there is simply no place to put them once they are there.
This has already led to some reported departures at the USPTO. Examining Attorneys are in high demand in private practice, and removing a key component of their job’s flexibility may convince more to seek employment in the private sector. If enough Examining Attorneys decide to leave the USPTO. the already extensive delays for trademark examination will only increase. Meanwhile, if a larger than anticipated number of Examining Attorneys do return to physical work, the additional office space that will be needed will increase the USPTO’s overhead, leading to even steeper fee increases in the next review cycle.
Ultimately it remains to be seen if these policies will be enacted and how they will affect the USPTO’s operations in the long run. What is certain is that filing trademark applications sooner, rather than later is a fantastic idea. While the increased fees are likely unavoidable, an application filed now may avoid the potential for incoming delays in the examination process.
