How Much Does it Cost to Trademark a Name?

The total cost to trademark a name ranges from about $350 (filing it yourself directly with the USPTO) to $2,000 or more with a trademark attorney. At my firm, the cost is $1,195 plus the $350 government filing fee per class, so $1,545 all-in for a single class.

Those numbers are easy to find. The harder question is what you actually get at each price point, and what it costs when a cheaper option goes wrong.

The Real Cost Comparison

Three options exist for filing a federal trademark application, and each comes with a different level of risk.

DIY Through the USPTO: $350

You file directly at USPTO.gov, pay the $350 government fee per class, and handle everything yourself. No attorney reviews your application. No one searches for conflicting marks beyond what you find on your own. No one checks whether your goods-and-services description fits the USPTO’s ID Manual.

This works if your mark is a made-up word in a single, obvious class with no similar marks in use anywhere. That describes maybe 5% of filings.

Online Filing Service: $649 to $899 Plus Government Fees

Services like LegalZoom charge $649 to $899 on top of the $350 USPTO fee. For that, you get a basic trademark search, application preparation, and status tracking. Some tiers include a consultation call.

What you typically do not get: a legal opinion on registrability, a response strategy if the USPTO issues an office action, or a search that covers state registrations and common law marks. The search included at this price point checks the federal database, which is one of three databases that matter.

Trademark Attorney: $800 to $2,000 Plus Government Fees

An attorney-filed application includes a full clearance search (federal, state, and common law), a legal opinion on whether your mark can actually register, proper classification of your goods and services, and someone who can respond if the USPTO pushes back.

At my firm, the $1,195 fee covers the search, the legal analysis, application preparation, and filing. If you receive an office action from the USPTO, that is a separate matter, but you have an attorney who already knows your file.

What Goes Wrong at the Cheaper Price Points

The USPTO rejects roughly half of all trademark applications, and the gap between attorney-filed and self-filed outcomes is significant. Attorney-filed applications register at about 60%, while pro se applications (filed without an attorney) land closer to 42%. Stanford Law research covering nearly three decades of USPTO data confirmed a similar split: attorney-filed marks reached publication 82% of the time versus 60% for pro se filers.

Those numbers become dollar amounts fast.

Filing in the wrong trademark class does not just delay your application, it kills it. The $350 government fee is gone, and you refile from scratch, pay $350 again, and restart the 8-to-12-month clock. That is $350 and a full year wasted on a mistake a proper review would have caught.

Missed conflicts are harder to see coming. A free search on the USPTO database only shows federally registered marks. It misses state registrations, common law marks, similar-sounding names, foreign language equivalents, and marks that look different on paper but sound identical when spoken. A professional clearance search covers all of these. If a conflict surfaces after you have filed, you lose the filing fee and any money you have spent building the brand around that name.

Over 60% of applications receive at least one office action, and getting one without a plan is where costs spiral. The USPTO examiner might flag your mark as descriptive, find a likelihood of confusion with another mark, or reject your specimen of use. Responding requires legal argument, not just paperwork, and attorney fees for an office action response typically run $1,500 to $3,500. If you filed through an online service that does not include this, you are now hiring an attorney at a higher rate than if you had started with one.

Abandoned applications are the most expensive outcome. If you miss the six-month deadline to respond to an office action, your application goes abandoned. Filing a petition to revive costs $250 in USPTO fees, has a strict two-month window, and requires showing the delay was unintentional. If revival fails, you file a brand-new application and pay the full government fee again.

The Costs Nobody Mentions

The filing fee is the first check you write, but it is not the last.

If you file based on intent to use (you have not started selling yet), you must later submit a Statement of Use proving the mark is in commerce. The government fee is $150 per class, and you may need to request extensions at $125 each.

Between the fifth and sixth year after registration, you must file a Section 8 declaration proving you are still using the mark. The fee is $325 per class. Miss this deadline and your registration gets cancelled. A six-month grace period exists, but it adds a $100 surcharge per class. At the same time, you can file a Section 15 declaration ($250 per class) that makes your mark “incontestable,” meaning it becomes much harder for someone to challenge it later. Optional, but worth filing.

At the ten-year mark, you file both a continued-use declaration and a renewal application (Section 8 and Section 9), which together cost $650 per class. Miss this and you lose the registration entirely.

Here is how long the full trademark process takes from application to registration, for context on these timelines.

Ten-year total for a single class, assuming no office actions:

That is the real cost of owning a trademark for a decade in one class. Every additional class adds to each line item.

Do You Need Multiple Classes?

The USPTO organizes all goods and services into 45 international classes, and each class requires its own filing fee.

A coffee shop selling branded mugs needs at least two: Class 43 for restaurant services and Class 21 for the mugs. A clothing brand with an online store may need Class 25 for apparel and Class 35 for retail services. One class covers most small businesses, but two or three classes are common for businesses that sell both products and services.

When You Might Not Need an Attorney

Not every filing requires an attorney. If your mark is a coined or made-up word that nobody else is using, you are filing in a single obvious class, you are already using the mark in commerce, and a free USPTO search turns up zero results, you can likely handle it yourself.

But “zero results on a free search” is not the same as “no conflicts exist,” because the free search misses state marks, common law marks, and phonetic similarities. An attorney costs more upfront, but fixing a rejected or abandoned application costs more than that. The most expensive trademark filing is the one you do twice.

Next Steps

If you want to know what trademarking your specific name will cost, contact my office for a flat-fee quote. I will tell you how many classes you need, whether any conflicts exist, and what the total cost looks like before you commit to anything.