How to Trademark a Word: Filing, Costs, and Rights

To trademark a word in the United States, you file an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for $350 per class of goods or services, submit proof that you use the word in commerce, and wait roughly 12 to 18 months for examination, publication, and registration.¹ What you get at the end is not ownership of the word in every sense, but the exclusive right to use it in connection with the specific products or services you registered.

Pick a Word That Can Actually Be Registered

The USPTO ranks proposed marks on a spectrum of distinctiveness, and where your word falls decides whether it can be registered at all.

The strongest marks are fanciful ones: invented words with no dictionary meaning, such as Exxon or Pepsi. Arbitrary marks are real words used in a context that has nothing to do with their ordinary meaning — Apple for computers is the classic example. Suggestive marks hint at a quality of the product without describing it, and a customer needs some imagination to make the connection. Coppertone for sun-tanning products is suggestive. All three of these categories are registrable, and fanciful marks get the broadest protection.²

Words That Face Refusals

Descriptive words directly describe a feature of the product — “Cold and Creamy” for ice cream. The USPTO will not put a descriptive word on the Principal Register unless you can prove it has acquired “secondary meaning,” meaning consumers have come to associate that word with one specific source through years of use.² Building that association takes serious time and marketing spend, so a descriptive word is an uphill choice for a brand-new brand.

Generic words cannot be trademarked at all. “Computer” for computers, “clock” for timepieces. No one is allowed to claim exclusive rights to the everyday name customers need to describe the product itself.²

Surnames get refused when the primary significance of the word to consumers is as a last name. “Hamilton Pharmaceuticals” would be treated as primarily merely a surname.³ Like descriptive words, surnames can eventually overcome the refusal by showing acquired distinctiveness. Geographic terms run into a similar problem when consumers would think the word identifies where the goods come from. Geographic marks can sometimes reach the Principal Register through acquired distinctiveness, or they can sit on the Supplemental Register, a secondary registry that lets you use the ® symbol but carries weaker protections.

Search Before You File

Before you spend anything, search the USPTO’s trademark database to see if someone already owns the word or something close to it. The USPTO retired the old Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) in late 2023 and now offers an updated search tool on its website.⁴

Look for exact matches first, then phonetic equivalents, alternate spellings, and words with similar meanings. A prior mark does not have to be identical to yours to block your application; the USPTO will refuse registration if consumers are likely to confuse the two. “Koffee Korner” and “Coffee Corner” for café services would almost certainly be treated as confusingly similar. If your search turns up close matches in your industry, pick a different word before you file.

Filing the Application

Applications are filed online through the USPTO’s Trademark Center, which replaced the older Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) in January 2025.⁵ The base filing fee is $350 per class of goods or services. If you write custom descriptions for your goods or services instead of selecting entries from the USPTO’s Trademark ID Manual, you pay an extra $200 per class.⁶

Every application must include your name and domicile address, your legal entity type, a clear representation of the mark, a filing basis, correctly classified goods or services chosen from the ID Manual, and a verified statement signed by an authorized person.⁷ Applicants based outside the United States are required to hire a U.S.-licensed attorney to file for them.⁸

Choosing a Filing Basis

Domestic applicants usually pick one of two bases. If you already use the word in commerce, you file under “use in commerce” and submit a specimen showing how the word appears in the actual marketplace. If you have not started using the word yet but genuinely intend to, you file an “intent to use” application. Intent-to-use filings let you claim your place in line while you get ready to launch, but they come with extra deadlines and costs.

Once the USPTO approves an intent-to-use application and issues a Notice of Allowance, you have six months to file a Statement of Use — proof that you have actually started using the mark in commerce — plus a $150 per class fee. If you need more time, you can request up to five six-month extensions at $125 per class each, giving you a maximum of 36 months from the Notice of Allowance to start using the mark.⁹ After the first extension, each further request must include a showing of “good cause” describing your ongoing efforts to bring the mark into use.

What Counts as a Specimen

A specimen is real-world evidence of the word being used as a trademark in commerce, and getting it wrong is one of the most common reasons applications stall.¹⁰

For goods, acceptable specimens include labels or tags attached to the product, product packaging showing the mark, or a website where customers can buy the goods with the mark displayed. For services, acceptable specimens include advertisements, brochures, website screenshots showing the mark used with the services, business signage, or a service vehicle displaying the mark.¹¹ Advertising material works as a specimen for services but not for goods.¹⁰ A flyer promoting your consulting business is fine; a flyer advertising your physical product is not. For goods, the word has to appear on or directly connected to the product itself.

Whatever you submit must be a genuine example of real use, not a mockup, printer’s proof, or digitally altered image. If it is a webpage, include the URL and the date you accessed or printed it.¹⁰

What Happens After You File

Expect to wait roughly 4.5 months before a USPTO examining attorney reviews your application.¹² The examiner checks whether the mark meets legal requirements and searches for conflicts. If they find problems — the word is too descriptive, or it clashes with an existing mark — they issue an Office Action explaining the objections.

You have three months from the date of the Office Action to respond. You can buy a single three-month extension by paying a fee, and that is it; non-Madrid applicants get no further extensions.¹³ Miss the deadline and the application is abandoned. Some Office Actions raise easy issues you can fix with a clarification or an amended description. Others, like a likelihood-of-confusion refusal, are hard to overcome.

If the examiner approves the application, or if you clear every objection, the mark is published in the Trademark Official Gazette, a weekly online publication. Publication opens a 30-day window in which anyone who believes registration would harm them can challenge it by filing a Notice of Opposition with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.¹⁴ Most applications are not opposed. When no one objects, the USPTO issues the registration certificate.

What It Actually Costs

The minimum out-of-pocket cost for a single-class registration is $350. Most applicants end up paying more once other fees stack up.

Base application fee of $350 per class. Add $200 per class if you write custom descriptions rather than picking entries from the USPTO’s ID Manual.⁶
Intent-to-use follow-on fees of $150 per class for the Statement of Use, plus $125 per class for any extension request.⁶
A fee for the three-month Office Action extension if you need it; the amount tracks the current fee schedule.
Attorney fees, if you hire one. Domestic applicants are not required to have counsel, but many do. A straightforward application often runs between $1,000 and $2,500 in legal fees on top of the USPTO costs.

Every fee multiplies by the number of classes. A two-class intent-to-use application with custom descriptions would run $1,100 in filing fees alone before any attorney involvement.

Keeping the Registration Alive

A registration lasts 10 years, but the USPTO will cancel it well before then if you skip the required maintenance filings.¹⁵

Between the fifth and sixth anniversaries of registration, you must file a Section 8 Declaration of Use confirming the mark is still in commercial use and attaching a current specimen. The fee is $325 per class filed electronically.¹⁶ Miss the window and you get a six-month grace period with a per-class surcharge.¹⁷

Between the ninth and tenth anniversaries, and every 10 years after that, you file a combined Section 8 Declaration and Section 9 Renewal Application. Filed electronically, the combined fee is $650 per class ($325 for Section 8 plus $325 for Section 9). Filing during the grace period pushes the total to $850 per class.¹⁶ Miss the grace period and the registration is cancelled with no exceptions. Put these dates on the calendar the day the certificate arrives.

Optional: Filing for Incontestability

Once the mark has been in continuous use for five consecutive years after registration, you can file a Section 15 Declaration of Incontestability for $250.¹⁸ It is optional. Once filed, the registration is conclusive evidence of your right to use the mark and knocks out several common legal challenges a competitor might otherwise raise.¹⁹ Third parties can still attack the mark for abandonment, fraud, or genericness, but the most common attack — arguing the mark was never distinctive enough to register in the first place — is off the table.

The Rights You Get, and Enforcing Them

Federal registration gives you the exclusive right to use the word for the goods or services you registered, nationwide, and puts the public on notice through the USPTO’s database.²⁰ It does not give you rights over the word outside the products or services you registered for.

The USPTO does not police the marketplace. Enforcement is on you. If someone uses your word or something confusingly similar in a way that could mislead consumers, you have to act, because the longer you tolerate infringement the weaker your rights become.²¹

Enforcement usually starts with a cease-and-desist letter, and many disputes resolve there, especially when the other party had no idea about your registration. If the letter does not work, you can file a civil suit in state or federal court, though most cases end up in federal court.²¹ Available remedies include court orders stopping the unauthorized use, monetary damages, and in some cases the infringer’s profits.²²

If You Skip Registration

You do not technically need a federal registration to have any trademark rights. Simply using a word in commerce to identify your goods or services creates common law rights in the geographic area where you actually do business.²⁰ Common law rights let you use the ™ symbol and can support a local challenge to someone using the same mark nearby.

The limits are real. Common law rights reach only as far as your actual reputation, not the whole country. Someone in another state could adopt the same word for the same products and you would have limited ability to stop them. Federal registration creates rights across the entire United States.²⁰ For any business that plans to grow beyond a single market, the $350 filing fee is worth it.

1
United States Patent and Trademark Office. How Long Does It Take to Register
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United States Patent and Trademark Office. Strong Trademarks
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United States Patent and Trademark Office. Possible Grounds for Refusal of a Mark
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United States Patent and Trademark Office. Retiring TESS: What to Know About the New Trademark Search System
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United States Patent and Trademark Office. New Features – Trademark Center
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United States Patent and Trademark Office. About Trademark Infringement
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1114 – Remedies for Infringement