We have good news for current and future clients! The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has released proposed reductions for the fees it charges to file trademark applications and renewals. As we have discussed in previous blog entries, there are numerous advantages to filing for federal registration of your trademark. Some of these include: public notice of your claim of ownership of the mark; a legal presumption of your ownership of the mark and your exclusive right to use the mark nationwide; and the ability to bring an action concerning the mark in federal court.

The USPTO issued a notice of proposed rulemaking on May 9, 2014. In that notice, the USPTO proposed reducing its trademark fees from $325 to $275 for most applications. There are two conditions that must be met. First, the applicant must use the USPTO’s Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS). Second, the applicant must agree to receive all correspondence by e-mail, and use TEAS to file Office Action Responses and all other documents through TEAS as well. This option would be known as a TEAS Reduced Fee application.

The fee for a TEAS Plus application is also proposed to be reduced from $275 to $225 if both of the above conditions are met. A TEAS Plus application is one in which an applicant selects its description of goods/services from the USPTO’s Acceptable Identification of Goods and Services Manual, rather than entering free-form text.

Lastly, the USPTO’s notice proposed reducing the fee from $400 to $300 per class for renewal of an existing registration.

We hope this motivates our readers to file trademark applications for their company names, product or service names, and logos. Remember, you must have a federal registration to sue another party in federal court for trademark infringement. Please contactDavid Lilenfeld at David@lilenfeldpc.com or Sonia Lakhany at Sonia@lilenfeldpc.com if you would like more information on registering a trademark.

David M. Lilenfeld