The US Patent and Trademark Office, as of January 14, has changed a number of fees in connection with trademark registration.

Notable is the jump in the fee for filing a paper application for trademark registration. The per-class fee for filing an initial application is now a whopping $600, an increase of $225 over the previous $375. The fee for filing an online application has increased from $325 to $400, a bump of $75.

It has always been more costly to file a paper application as opposed to an electronic one, but now the difference is $200 rather than a mere $50. Why the big difference? According to the USPTO’s website, it is part of “incentivising.” Electronic filing is more efficient and it costs less. Filing online is therefore preferred and encouraged.

Other fees increased

A number of other fees have increased as well. Filing a Statement of Use has doubled in cost, from $100 to $200, and a Request for an Extension of Time for Filing a Statement of Use has gone up $75. There is even an apparently new charge called an Additional Fee for Expedited Service, a “rush” charge. It’s $160.

In addition to providing incentive to file electronically, the increases are also part of an effort to “better align fees with full costs,” according to the government website.

[See Trademark Fee Changes at uspto.gov].

It should be noted that these price increases are in connection with federal trademark registrations only and do not affect trademark registrations at the state level. Most states in the US offer trademark registrations at a much lower cost than what the USPTO charges, though the protection is more limited. In addition, trademark rights also derive from simply using a trademark in connection with goods or services. These are called common law trademark rights, and are limited to the geographical area where the mark is used. To prove common law rights in a trademark, it must be shown that the one claiming ownership of the mark was the first to use the mark in a geographical area.