Instinctively, they, like you, are weighing the cost of registration against the cost of not registering.  It’s a hard place to be—feeling like you’re weighing the cost of hedging your bets that you won’t run into a trademark issue.  

I am going to give you a run down of what you can expect to invest to register your trademark, but honestly, where the law and your business are concerned, you don’t want to hedge your bets.  Really.

Ask yourself honestly: for the long-term health & viability of your brand (and your business), do you want to rely on hope alone?

Because that is what we’re talking about.

I know you don’t.  How do I know?  Because I don’t—and even as a lawyer, doing this stuff day after day, I’m an entrepreneur who’s been there.  I’ve procrastinated and hedged my bets on the health of my own brand and business.  It is an anxiety you just can’t get rid of.  (No matter how much yoga you do. I’ve tried that too.)  And it just doesn’t pay. It will always cost you substantially more when you put it off. Why?

Little I’ve encountered in the legal world causes the mental, emotional & energetic —not to mention financial—strain for a business owner like the prospect of losing her trademark.

I really cannot underscore this enough.  Avoiding the emotional turmoil and stress of sorting out a trademark issue is worth many many times the cost of investing in developing and registering a strong, distinctive trademark. (And, after all the effort and resources spent to sort it out, you might lose the brand you’ve put your heart and soul into creating, nurturing and growing.

This is how clients have described their experience with a threat to losing (or actually losing) their trademarks:

“Struck to the core of my being.”

“Shaken.”

“Panicked.”

“Furious and protective, like what’s mine has been ripped from me.”

These are claims that we reserve for those things that are most essential to how we invest in and value ourselves.  They are things we say about something that has rocked us, that has shifted the very ground under our feet.  They are very telling about the power of a trademark.

So invest in it. Please. It may be the most valuable piece of your business.  It will pay you back in peace of mind, in brand recognition and even in revenue.  A trademark is an asset; it can get leveraged and sold, and it gets a measurable return on investment.

What can you expect to invest  to register your trademark?

What you can expect to invest to federally register varies depending on how you go about it.  You have two basic choices:  (1) hire an attorney or (2) do it yourself.

I discount and do not recommend a possible third option of purchasing an on-line service through a company like LegalZoom or Trademarkia.com because, in reality, they provide data entry services into the existing U.S. Trademark Office’s system; and, in my experience, they do not ensure that even the most basic and essential information is included in your application. They also do nothing to educate you so that you understand exactly what you are securing and what to expect. I have had clients who have hired me to straighten out pending applications originally filed through such services that have been missing the most basic required information such as the date of the mark’s first use.

Either way you choose to prepare and file your application for federal registration, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will charge you a filing fee of $250 for its ready-made classifications and $350 for a classification you or your attorney write yourself, assuming that you file your application through its online system, TEAS.

The cost to hire  an attorney.

Typically, an attorney will charge you by either the phase or the hour to advise you, prepare your application and secure registration of your trademark.  I charge by the phase and, because federal trademark registration is federal law, I can work with clients in any state.

You can expect that your trademark registration will include (1) research & analysis of the mark; (2) preparation and filing of the application for registration; and (3) one Office Action on a routine issue.  Any potential substantive Office Actions can typically be anticipated when we research and analyze your mark.

In my research of attorneys’ fees for trademarks, fees commonly run between $1500 and $3500. (Some volume-based trademark attorneys have fees in the $600 to $900 range; but there have been a number of malpractice cases against attorneys since 2018, for failing to actually provide legal advice, so tread carefully. You might wind up paying for data entry just like you would with a LegalZoom-type service.) 

Fees start well above that if you find yourself with an infringement issue and an unregistered mark.  You can expect to invest $5000 to straighten out even the “simplest” infringement issue, in addition to the cost of registering your mark, if you can and it’s strategically advantageous at that time.

Under my fee schedule, you can expect to spend the following: $1000 for Research & Analysis of your trademark; $1000 for Assessing the Sufficiency of its Current Use and Writing the Most Strategic Description of Goods & Services; and $1000 for Preparation, Filing & Routine or Administrative Office Actions.

Attorneys’ fees do not include the non-refundable filing fee charged by the Trademark Office. 

To get started, you can reach out to me here.

© 2012 Rebecca Prien, Esq. Fees updated September 2021.