How Much Does a Trademark Attorney Cost for a Small Business?

Ask ten people what it costs to trademark a name and you'll get ten different numbers, none of them wrong, all of them incomplete. That's because "cost to trademark a name" is actually three separate bills wearing a trench coat: a government fee that's fixed, an attorney fee that isn't, and a set of add-on costs almost nobody mentions until they show up.

Here's the number that matters most and gets misquoted the most: the USPTO's base government filing fee is $350 per class of goods or services. That figure is fixed by the federal government. Everything past it — who's doing the work, how thoroughly, and what happens if the USPTO pushes back — is where the real range lives. [Segarra IP — insert your current flat-fee rate and exactly what it includes here.]

The Government Fee, Precisely

Since January 18, 2025, the USPTO scrapped its old two-tier TEAS Plus / TEAS Standard system in favor of one base fee: $350 per class, provided the application is complete and uses a pre-approved description pulled from USPTO's own Identification of Goods and Services Manual. Deviate from that, and the surcharges start stacking:

• $100 per class for insufficient information
• $200 per class for a free-text goods/services description not found in the ID Manual
• $200 for every additional 1,000 characters beyond the first 1,000 used to describe your goods or services

This is worth sitting with for a second: the USPTO built a fee structure that financially rewards precision and penalizes vagueness. An applicant who doesn't know that walks in already paying more than one who does — before an attorney is even in the conversation. And these numbers move. USPTO fees are set through public rulemaking and have climbed at nearly every cycle since the agency gained fee-setting authority; confirm the live schedule at uspto.gov before you file, because any number printed on the internet, including this one, has a shelf life.

What Multiple Classes Do to the Bill

Every additional class of goods or services is its own $350 base fee, not a discount tier. A single-product brand in one class might pay $350 total in government fees. A brand selling a physical product, a subscription service, and branded apparel could easily span three classes — $1,050 in government fees alone, before any attorney work is added, and before any surcharges from an imprecise description. This is exactly why "how much does it cost to trademark a name" has no single answer: the honest response is always "it depends how many classes your actual business spans," and most founders underestimate that number when they're only thinking about what they sell today.

The Attorney Fee, Which Is Where the Real Range Lives

Attorney fees aren't regulated the way the government fee is, which is exactly why the online quotes range so wildly. Structurally, they land in one of two buckets: a flat-fee package, where you know the total before you commit, or hourly billing, where the total scales with how much friction the application hits. [Segarra IP — describe your fee structure here: what's included in the flat fee, what triggers additional billing, and how that compares to hourly alternatives.]

Neither structure is inherently better. A flat fee that excludes Office Action response is a bet that you won't need it — and statistically, that's not a great bet. An hourly arrangement with a disciplined, communicative attorney can end up cheaper than a bloated flat fee. The number on the homepage tells you almost nothing until you know exactly what it buys.

The Total Cost of Ownership, Not Just the Filing

Most cost comparisons stop at the moment of filing, which is a little like pricing a car by its sticker and ignoring insurance, gas, and maintenance for the next ten years. A trademark is a similarly long-horizon asset. A more honest total includes: the clearance search, the initial filing fee per class, a reasonably likely Office Action response (common enough to budget for, not just hope against), the Section 8 declaration of continued use due between years five and six, and the combined Section 8/9 renewal due at year ten and every ten years after. None of those line items are optional if you intend to keep the mark long-term — they're the actual cost of ownership, and a firm that only quotes you the first one is quoting you a fraction of the real number.

The Costs That Catch Founders Off Guard

• Additional classes. Each class of goods or services is its own $350 government fee. A brand spanning a physical product and a digital service isn't one filing — it's two, and the price multiplies accordingly.
• Office Action responses. A mishandled or missed response can abandon the application outright. Fixing a DIY mistake after the fact routinely costs more than paying an attorney to prevent it in the first place.
• Post-registration maintenance. Registered trademarks require ongoing filings — a Section 8 declaration between years five and six, a combined renewal every ten years after — to stay legally active. Skip one, and the USPTO cancels the registration you already paid to get.
• Specimen problems. If your proof of use doesn't meet the USPTO's technical requirements, you may need to resubmit — sometimes requiring a delay until the product or service is actually ready to demonstrate, which can stall an otherwise-clean application at no fault of the attorney.
• Opposition proceedings. Rare for most small businesses, but if a third party formally opposes your application during the publication period, that's a separate proceeding with its own cost structure, typically well beyond a standard flat fee.

A Worked Example: What Three Classes Actually Looks Like

Abstract fee schedules are easy to skim past. Here's a concrete run: a founder launching a beverage brand that sells bottled product (Class 32), runs a subscription box (Class 35, retail services), and licenses the name to a third-party café partnership (Class 43, restaurant services). That's three classes, three separate $350 government fees -- $1,050 before a single attorney hour is billed. Add a clearance search across all three categories, correct classification for each, and a goods-and-services description drafted from the ID Manual to avoid the $200-per-class free-text surcharge, and the attorney fee sits on top of that $1,050 base. Skip the search, get hit with a likelihood-of-confusion refusal in the beverage class specifically, and you're now paying to refile in just that class while the other two proceed -- a partial restart, not a full one, but a restart nonetheless. The lesson isn't "three classes is expensive." It's that the government fee scales with the actual footprint of your business, and most founders quote themselves a number based on what they sell today, not what they've already told investors, co-packers, or landlords they plan to sell next year.

What Actually Drives Attorney Fee Variation

Two firms quoting different numbers for what sounds like the same service usually aren't actually quoting the same service. The variables that move the price: how many classes are involved, whether the mark is highly distinctive (fast, clean search) or descriptive/suggestive (a longer, more judgment-heavy clearance analysis), whether the goods-and-services description can be pulled straight from the ID Manual or needs custom drafting, and how the firm prices Office Action response -- bundled in, or billed as encountered. A firm quoting a lower number with a narrower scope isn't necessarily worse. It's just answering a different question than the firm next to it, and the only way to compare them honestly is to ask each one, line by line, what's actually included -- not to compare the headline number alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is $350 the total cost to trademark my business name?
No — that's the government filing fee for a single class of goods or services. A brand covering multiple categories pays that fee per class, and it doesn't include any attorney fee.

Why do trademark costs vary so much online?
Because "cost to trademark a name" bundles very different services under one search term — a DIY filing service, a flat-fee attorney package, and hourly legal representation all show up interchangeably. The government fee is fixed. Everything else depends on who's doing the work and what's included.

Does a cheaper filing service save money in the long run?
Not always. A low-cost filing service typically doesn't evaluate whether your mark is likely to be refused or opposed before you pay the government fee — meaning a rejected application can mean paying to file twice, plus the time lost in between.

How much does it cost to trademark a name and logo together?
It depends on what you're actually protecting. USPTO applications are filed as either standard characters — the words themselves, regardless of styling — or a special-form drawing of a specific stylized or design version. Broad protection for the name plus separate protection for the logo's distinct design typically means two applications, each with its own per-class government fee. Many businesses start with the standard-character word mark, since it's the broader protection, and file a design application later if the logo becomes a stable, valuable asset in its own right.

Is trademark cost the same for every industry?
The government fee structure is identical regardless of industry — it's driven by number of classes, not what you sell. Attorney fees can vary by complexity: a straightforward single-class retail brand is typically simpler and cheaper to clear and file than a multi-class brand in a crowded, heavily litigated category.

What ongoing costs should I budget for after registration?
Plan for a Section 8 declaration of continued use between years five and six, and a combined Section 8/9 renewal at year ten and every ten years after — each carries its own USPTO fee, separate from the original filing cost.

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