Guide
How long does it take to get a trademark
Half of the US trademark applications filed in 2022 that went on to register took more than 16 months, and a quarter took more than 22 (Knockoff analysis of USPTO case files, September 2026, data as of April 3, 2026). The USPTO publishes shorter figures for a different finish line: 4.2 months to a first review and 9.7 months to registration or abandonment, both as of August 10, 2026.
Another 8 percent of that filing year was still waiting when we counted, so 16 months is a floor. The office answers the question itself as 12 to 18 months, on a page last updated January 18, 2025. Neither government figure is the day your certificate arrives. The headline number stops counting at a different finish line, and it leaves out every application that was suspended or opposed.
Which half of the spread you land in comes down to two forks. The first is whether you are already selling under the name, because an intent-to-use filing adds a notice of allowance and a statement of use to the end of the calendar. The second is whether the examining attorney sends an office action, which about two in three applications draw (Knockoff, September 2026).
By Josh Pigford, founder of Knockoff. Written . USPTO wait-time figures as of August 10, 2026 and its workload table as of July 31, 2026, both read September 8. Re-checked every September.
The short version
- Filing to the first review averaged 4.2 months as of August 10, 2026, against a 5.0-month target. It closed fiscal 2025 at 5.6 months.
- The 9.7-month figure counts applications that registered and applications that died, and leaves out every suspended or opposed one. It is not a time to a certificate.
- An office action costs about five and a half months. Of the 2022 filings that registered, those with one took 19.0 months against 13.4 months for those without. Across everything filed in 2022, 64% drew one (Knockoff, September 2026).
- Three of the eight stages run on clocks you control: filing, answering an office action, and filing the statement of use.
- Four belong to the USPTO queue, and one is fixed by rule: 30 days to oppose after publication, extendable to at most 180 days.
What the USPTO's own numbers say
The USPTO's published trademark processing times are two averages: 4.2 months from filing to the first examining action, against a 5.0-month target, and 9.7 months from filing to the point an application either registers or goes abandoned, against an 11.0-month target. Both are dated August 10, 2026. The office adds its own warning on the same page: "Your wait time may be less than the average or longer than the average."
A second table on that page, dated July 31, 2026, is the office's own workload, and that is where the delay hides. The pre-examination queue was running 116 days against a 10-day target, requests to extend an intent-to-use deadline 198 days against 15, and statements of use 73 days against 15. A statement of use sitting for 73 days is the difference between a certificate in November and one in February.
The trend dates every other answer to this question. The USPTO closed fiscal 2025 with first action pendency of 5.6 months against a 6.7-month goal, and average total processing time of 11.7 months against a 13-month goal (USPTO, December 2, 2025). Halfway through fiscal 2026 it reported first action pendency down 20 percent to 4.45 months and total processing time down to 10.03 months, with filings up 7 percent (USPTO, May 5, 2026). Its stated long-term goals are four months to a first action and nine months to disposal by fiscal 2028.
It got slow for a reason. The backlog of unexamined applications grew 256 percent between fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2023. First action pendency went from 2.6 months to 8.5 over those years, and total pendency from 9.3 to 14.6 (Commerce Department Office of Inspector General, October 24, 2024). The same audit had the office projecting no drop below six months until fiscal 2027. It got there a year early.
One thing not to do with those numbers is string them into a single line. The office has published them under four labels, "total pendency", "disposal pendency", "average total processing time" and "trademark registering or application abandoning", against targets of 12.0, 14.4, 13.0 and 11.0 months, plus a separate 14-month target for the measure that includes suspended and board cases. No crosswalk between the labels is published, so every figure here carries its year, its label and its source.
The definition behind the headline figure is the part worth memorizing. The Inspector General states it as "the average number of months from date of filing to notice of abandonment, notice of allowance, or registration for applications". A footnote adds that the measure "excludes applications that were previously suspended or were involved in proceedings at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board", and the USPTO's dashboard carries the same definition. So an intent-to-use application counts as finished on the day it is allowed. The certificate can be six months to three years behind that day. The published average answers a question about the office's throughput, not about when your certificate lands.
Rebuilding the office's own measure from the underlying case files shows the size of that gap. Take every US-domiciled application filed in 2019, count each one from filing to the first of abandonment, notice of allowance or registration, and drop the suspended ones. That is the USPTO's definition, and it comes out at 9.09 months, within about a quarter of a month of the 9.3 the office published for fiscal 2019. Count the same applications to the day they actually registered and the middle one took 10.8 months, with a quarter taking more than 17.4 (Knockoff analysis of USPTO case files, September 2026, data as of April 3, 2026). Same applications, same files, two finish lines. The office runs two clocks of its own for the same reason. At the third quarter of fiscal 2026 its total pendency read 9.77 months, while the measure that includes suspended and board cases read 11.32 (USPTO Trademarks Dashboard workbook, last updated July 24, 2026).
How long it took for applications like yours
Across the roughly 174,000 US trademark applications filed in 2022 that went on to register, half took more than 16 months from filing to registration and a quarter took more than 22 months, according to Knockoff's analysis of USPTO case files.
The same group in full, with every number in the figure repeated here in words. Of the 355,864 US-domiciled applications filed in calendar 2022, 48.81% had registered by April 3, 2026, 43.13% were abandoned and 8.06% were still waiting. The times below describe the 173,684 that reached a certificate: half registered within 16.3 months of filing, a quarter within 13.3, three quarters within 22.1 and nine in ten within 29.7. Those still pending can only register later, so the middle of the whole filing year sits between 16.3 and 18.1 months. Counted over everything filed, 3.02% of 2022 filings had registered within twelve months and 28.39% within eighteen (Knockoff analysis of USPTO case files, September 2026, data as of April 3, 2026).
One event splits the group in half. 64.05% of all 355,864 applications filed in 2022 drew at least one office action. Among the ones that went on to register, those with an office action took a median 19.0 months against 13.4 months for those without, a gap of five and a half months. Of the office-action group that registered, 45.25% got there inside eighteen months, against 73.86% of the clean group that registered. The 2019 filing year has now settled, and it runs the same way: 13.4 months against 7.1 (Knockoff analysis of USPTO case files, September 2026, data as of April 3, 2026).
The other three splits, all measured on 2022 filings that registered. Use-based applications took 13.7 months against 22.0 for intent-to-use ones, the widest gap on this page and the only one you choose before filing. The intent-to-use side also still had 12.55% pending against 2.48% for use-based, so that gap is a floor. A single-class application took 16.0 months against 18.3 for a multi-class one. Self-filed applications that registered were marginally faster, 15.0 months against 16.6 with an attorney of record. That is not a case for filing alone: 31.63% of self-filed applications registered at all, against 55.08% of those with an attorney (Knockoff, September 2026). Published research on a different set of applications, filed 1983 to 2018, points the same way: 46 percent of self-filed applications registered against 60 percent filed by counsel (Gerhardt and Lee, 112 The Trademark Reporter 869, 897 (2022)).
| Group | Median months | Middle half | 9 in 10 by | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019, no office action | 7.1 | 6.6 to 13.3 | 20.7 | 96,139 |
| 2019, office action | 13.4 | 9.3 to 20.8 | 33.1 | 100,605 |
| 2020, no office action | 9.0 | 7.1 to 14.2 | 22.5 | 103,060 |
| 2020, office action | 14.5 | 10.5 to 21.3 | 32.9 | 116,131 |
| 2021, no office action | 12.9 | 11.5 to 18.0 | 25.4 | 99,174 |
| 2021, office action | 18.8 | 14.5 to 25.6 | 35.1 | 109,288 |
| 2022, no office action | 13.4 | 13.1 to 18.5 | 24.5 | 78,467 |
| 2022, office action | 19.0 | 15.3 to 24.9 | 32.1 | 95,217 |
5.6 months
What an office action cost a 2022 filing that registered: 19.0 months against 13.4 without one. The two highlighted rows.
A median is the middle value, so half of each group took longer. Every row counts only applications that reached registration, so the ones still waiting are absent and each figure is a floor: 0.36% of 2019 filings were still pending at the snapshot, 2.23% of 2020, 3.11% of 2021 and 8.06% of 2022. Filings from 2023 and 2024 are left out for the same reason. The applications that draw an office action differ from the ones that do not, so this shows what went with an office action rather than what one caused. Knockoff analysis of USPTO case files, data as of April 3, 2026.
| Split | Slower | Faster | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Office action, or none | 19.0 with one | 13.4 with none | 5.6 |
| Intent to use, or already selling | 22.0 intent to use | 13.7 use-based | 8.3 |
| Two or more classes, or one | 18.3 multi-class | 16.0 single class | 2.3 |
| Attorney of record, or filed alone | 16.6 with an attorney | 15.0 self-filed | 1.6 |
All four rows are 2022 filings that registered, 173,684 of them, and a filing sits in several rows at once, so the rows overlap and cannot be added together. The last row is the one to read carefully: self-filed applications that registered were marginally faster, and far fewer of them registered at all, 31.63% against 55.08% with an attorney of record. Knockoff analysis of USPTO case files, data as of April 3, 2026.
How long does trademark registration take, filing year by filing year
By filing year the medians run 10.8 months for 2019, 12.2 for 2020, 15.9 for 2021 and 16.3 for 2022, with 0.36%, 2.23%, 3.11% and 8.06% of each year still pending. 2021 and 2022 sit at the peak, and 2021 carries the longest tail, nine in ten within 31.5 months. The series stops at 2022 because 14.56% of 2023 filings and 28.85% of 2024 filings were still open at the snapshot. Their times are unresolved rather than fast. 2019 is the settled answer to the office's own warning that "there's no guarantee your trademark will ever register". Of everything filed that year, 56.06% eventually registered (Knockoff, September 2026).
Where the data came from, and what it cannot tell you
The applications we counted. We pulled parts 61 to 91 of the USPTO Open Data Portal product TRTYRAP, "Trademark Full Text XML Data (No Images), Annual Applications", release apc18840407-20251231, which is 4.43 GB covering serials 87775865 to 99975318 and 4,693,768 case files. Parts run in serial-number order and serials track filing order, so a contiguous block covers a filing-date window, and we checked coverage month by month. The group is every case file filed in calendar 2019 through 2024 with a US-domiciled applicant, 2,245,846 of them. The latest transaction anywhere in those files is dated April 3, 2026, so that is the day every figure here is measured at. No 79-series serials appear, so Madrid Section 66(a) extensions of protection are absent by construction.
Definitions and how we counted. Months to registration are the gap between the filing date and the registration date on the same case file. The median is the middle value of that list, so half took less and half took more. An office action is at least one non-final action written or priority action event, and its share is counted over every application filed. The filing basis, the attorney of record and the class count come from the case file header. We rebuilt every median a second time on a separate code path, reading the registration transaction event dates instead of the case file's registration date, and the two runs agree within 0.04 months on every filing year. We also rebuilt the USPTO's own total pendency measure the same way, and it lands within about a quarter of a month of the office's published figure for fiscal 2019. The scripts and the figure data sit at .seo/briefs/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-a-trademark-scripts/. The product is annual, so we re-cut when the next release lands, about January 2027.
Known limits. A median is not a promise, and every time here is measured over applications that registered. Applications still pending are excluded, which is why the pending share sits beside each filing year. It is also why we publish times for 2019 through 2022 only: at 14.56% and 28.85% still open, the 2023 and 2024 filing years would report a floor and read as a result. Abandoned applications are excluded too, so this is the calendar for an application that works rather than for an average one. Nothing here is a cause. Nobody filed the same mark twice, once alone and once through counsel, the groups differ in more than the one thing each split is named after, and nothing here separates those differences.
The eight stages and how long each one takes
A United States trademark application runs through eight stages: you file, it waits for an examining attorney, the examining attorney issues a first action, you respond, the mark is approved and published, anyone may oppose it for thirty days, an intent-to-use application collects a notice of allowance and a statement of use, and then it registers. Read the clock column first. Four of those clocks belong to the USPTO queue, three are yours, and one is fixed by rule.
1. File
- How long
- Same day
- Who holds the clock
- You
- What it is
- $350 per class for an electronic base application (37 CFR 2.6), filed in Trademark Center, the online system that replaced the TEAS forms. Your filing date is set the day it goes in.
2. Wait for an examining attorney
- How long
- 4.2 months on average
- Who holds the clock
- USPTO queue
- What it is
- The wait to the first examining action, as of August 10, 2026, against a 5.0-month target. The pre-examination queue alone ran 116 days as of July 31, 2026.
3. First action or office action
- How long
- Arrives with that first review
- Who holds the clock
- USPTO queue
- What it is
- The examining attorney's first written decision. Most applications receive at least one office action (Gerhardt and Lee, 2022).
4. Respond, and wait for the review of it
- How long
- 3 months to answer, plus one paid 3-month extension
- Who holds the clock
- You
- What it is
- Three months from the issue date, extendable once to six months for $125 electronically (37 CFR 2.62 for the deadline, 37 CFR 2.6 for the fee). A Section 66(a) Madrid application gets six months and no extension.
5. Approval and publication
- How long
- About 1 month from approval to publication
- Who holds the clock
- USPTO queue
- What it is
- The mark clears examination and publishes in the Official Gazette (USPTO 1(a) timeline, last updated June 26, 2025).
6. Opposition window
- How long
- 30 days, extendable to at most 180 days from publication
- Who holds the clock
- Fixed by rule
- What it is
- Anyone who believes they would be damaged may oppose within thirty days (15 U.S.C. 1063). Extensions cannot reach past 180 days from publication (37 CFR 2.102). About 3 percent of applications are opposed.
7. Notice of allowance and statement of use, intent-to-use only
- How long
- Notice about 2 months after publication, then 6 months to file, up to 36 months
- Who holds the clock
- You, inside a fixed ceiling
- What it is
- The statement of use proves you are selling, and it carries a specimen, meaning a real-world example of the mark on the goods. It is due six months after the notice of allowance, and further six-month extensions stop at 36 months from the notice (37 CFR 2.89). USPTO's 1(b) timeline puts the practical cap at five extension requests.
8. Registration
- How long
- About 3 months after publication, or about 4 months from filing the statement of use
- Who holds the clock
- USPTO queue
- What it is
- On a use-based application the USPTO registers the mark within about three months after publication if nobody opposed. On an intent-to-use application the dashboard estimates about four months from the statement of use.
| Stage | How long | Who holds the clock | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. File | Same day | You | $350 per class for an electronic base application (37 CFR 2.6), filed in Trademark Center, the online system that replaced the TEAS forms. Your filing date is set the day it goes in. |
| 2. Wait for an examining attorney | 4.2 months on average | USPTO queue | The wait to the first examining action, as of August 10, 2026, against a 5.0-month target. The pre-examination queue alone ran 116 days as of July 31, 2026. |
| 3. First action or office action | Arrives with that first review | USPTO queue | The examining attorney's first written decision. Most applications receive at least one office action (Gerhardt and Lee, 2022). |
| 4. Respond, and wait for the review of it | 3 months to answer, plus one paid 3-month extension | You | Three months from the issue date, extendable once to six months for $125 electronically (37 CFR 2.62 for the deadline, 37 CFR 2.6 for the fee). A Section 66(a) Madrid application gets six months and no extension. |
| 5. Approval and publication | About 1 month from approval to publication | USPTO queue | The mark clears examination and publishes in the Official Gazette (USPTO 1(a) timeline, last updated June 26, 2025). |
| 6. Opposition window | 30 days, extendable to at most 180 days from publication | Fixed by rule | Anyone who believes they would be damaged may oppose within thirty days (15 U.S.C. 1063). Extensions cannot reach past 180 days from publication (37 CFR 2.102). About 3 percent of applications are opposed. |
| 7. Notice of allowance and statement of use, intent-to-use only | Notice about 2 months after publication, then 6 months to file, up to 36 months | You, inside a fixed ceiling | The statement of use proves you are selling, and it carries a specimen, meaning a real-world example of the mark on the goods. It is due six months after the notice of allowance, and further six-month extensions stop at 36 months from the notice (37 CFR 2.89). USPTO's 1(b) timeline puts the practical cap at five extension requests. |
| 8. Registration | About 3 months after publication, or about 4 months from filing the statement of use | USPTO queue | On a use-based application the USPTO registers the mark within about three months after publication if nobody opposed. On an intent-to-use application the dashboard estimates about four months from the statement of use. |
Stage two eats the most calendar and you cannot touch it. What you can touch is stage four, where a week of your own delay turns into a month of the office's. On an intent-to-use filing, stage seven can run longer than the rest of the calendar put together. One deadline has no give in it at all: the petition to revive an abandoned application is due within two months of the notice of abandonment. After that the only route is a new application, with a new filing date and new fees.
The response window at stage four is three months, not six. The USPTO's December 5, 2022 notice implementing the Trademark Modernization Act cut it. The three-month deadline applies to office actions issued on or after December 3, 2022, and one three-month extension costs $125 electronically (37 CFR 2.62 for the deadline, 37 CFR 2.6 for the fee). Six months with no extension now applies only to a Section 66(a) Madrid application. Any page still printing a flat six-month response window was written before the change.
Our own read of the case files puts numbers on the two stages that hold everyone up. Applications filed in 2024 waited a median of about six and a half months to hear from an examining attorney, and eight months to publication. That is not a disagreement with the USPTO's 4.2 months as of August 10, 2026. Ours is what 2024 filings actually waited; theirs is what an application reaching an examiner today waits. The office's own quarterly series brackets both, 7.51 months at the close of fiscal 2024 down to 5.60 a year later. The last stage behaves. For 2022 filings, half of the applications that published and went on to register did so within 2.5 months of publication, and six in ten of them registered exactly 77 days after publication (Knockoff, September 2026). That is where the office's estimate and the record line up: "within about three months after your trademark publishes".
One quiet stretch surprises people between stages five and six. The USPTO says that "it can take three to four months from the time the notice of publication is sent before you receive official notice of the next status of the application" (USPTO process overview, last updated August 11, 2026). Silence there is normal.
What makes it slower
An office action is what separates a fast application from a slow one. Of the 2022 filings that registered, those that drew one took a median 19.0 months against 13.4 months for those that did not (Knockoff analysis of USPTO case files, September 2026, data as of April 3, 2026). Five more things stretch the calendar past the average. Before you file, weigh the odds an application draws an office action against the name you have chosen.
- An office action. Most applications receive at least one (Gerhardt and Lee, 112 The Trademark Reporter 869, 876 (2022)), and 64.05% of everything filed in 2022 did in our own count. Three of the five and a half months it costs are your response window, six if you pay to extend it, and the rest is the examining attorney reading the reply. There is no USPTO fee to answer one. There is a professional fee if you hire the answer out, and what an office action response costs collects the published prices.
- A suspension. No published number exists for how long one lasts, because it has no fixed length. The USPTO's advisory committee puts it this way: disposal pendency "may be unusually long if the USPTO suspends an application while awaiting the outcome of another matter", such as an earlier-filed application or litigation (TPAC 2024 annual report, November 26, 2024). Suspended applications are also excluded from the office's published averages, so the averages look tidier than the queue feels.
- An opposition. Rare and slow. About 3 percent of applications are challenged through opposition proceedings (Gerhardt and Lee, 2022), and TPAC reports that trial processing at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board averages three or more years. Even without an actual opposition, a stranger can stretch the window: extensions stop at 180 days from publication, and no extension past that is granted under any circumstances (37 CFR 2.102).
- Filing on intent to use. The single biggest lever, and it is yours. Of the 2022 filings that registered, the intent-to-use ones took a median 22.0 months against 13.7 for use-based ones. Each six-month extension of the statement of use deadline pushed the total out by about six more: 20.4 months with no extension, 26.7 with one, 33.0 with two, 38.3 with three (Knockoff, September 2026). After the notice of allowance you have six months to file, extendable six months at a time to a ceiling of 36 months. The first extension needs no reason; every later one needs a showing of good cause. Filing on use skips the whole stage. If you cannot, the extension ladder before abandonment is the deadline to put in the calendar the day the notice arrives.
- Your own response time. Every day between the office action landing in your inbox and your reply going back is a day added to the total, and it is the only stretch where nobody is working on your file.
- Filing several applications at once. This is one reason your own wait can differ from the published average. Applications are generally assigned in filing order, but the USPTO queues everything one applicant files within a three-month period, up to ten applications, with the first one filed. File the name and the logo together and both wait for the older one's turn.
What you can do to make it faster
Nothing you pay for buys a place at the front of the examination queue, and the one official route out of turn is narrower than it sounds. Three choices are left, two of them made before you file, and together they are worth more than the expedite request most people ask about first.
- Take the goods description from the USPTO ID Manual. Writing your own costs $200 more per class and hands the examining attorney something to object to. The USPTO also states that "filing stand-alone Base applications with no surcharges increases the likelihood that an application will proceed to registration as quickly as possible". That is the office's own claim rather than a measured result, because the chart under it says the data is not currently available.
- File on use if you are already selling. A use-based application skips the notice of allowance, the statement of use, its $150 per class fee and every extension behind it. It is worth about eight months: 13.7 against 22.0 for the 2022 filings that registered (Knockoff, September 2026). That is the largest single saving available to a store that has been shipping for a few months.
- Answer the office action the week it arrives. The three-month window is a ceiling, not a schedule. Paying $125 to extend it buys three more months of waiting, not three more months of progress.
Then there is the petition to make special, which is less useful than the pages recommending it suggest. It asks the Director under 37 CFR 2.146 to advance an application out of turn and costs $400 electronically. The USPTO calls it "an extraordinary remedy that is granted only when very special circumstances exist, such as a demonstrable possibility of the loss of substantial rights", denied "when the circumstances would apply equally to a large number of other applicants" (TMEP 1710.01). The evidence it names as commonly accepted is a civil complaint showing pending litigation over the mark, a cease and desist letter showing threatened litigation, or a government regulation requiring a registration. Wanting to run an ad campaign is named as insufficient. So is wanting to sell on a particular website, which is the instinct a founder arrives with. The USPTO publishes no decision time and no grant rate, so nobody can tell you what one buys in weeks.
Both decisions settle before anything is filed, so settle them with something better than a guess: pick the class before you price the filing, then work out the government fees for that class count.
How long does it take to trademark a name or a logo
A name and a logo are two applications, on the same eight stages, each with its own fee and its own examining attorney.
How long does it take to trademark a name
A word mark in one class is the shortest route on this page. Of the 2022 filings that registered, single-class applications took a median 16.0 months against 18.3 months for multi-class ones (Knockoff analysis of USPTO case files, September 2026, data as of April 3, 2026). Every extra class multiplies the $350 government fee and adds another chance at a refusal that holds the whole application, so the class list is a timing decision as much as a budget one.
How long does it take to trademark a logo
A logo is a second application with its own $350 per class, its own examining attorney and its own office action risk, so it runs on its own copy of the same calendar. The queue rule is the part that surprises people. The USPTO assigns applications in filing order, but everything one applicant files within a three-month period, up to ten applications, is queued with the first one filed. File the name in March and the logo in April and both wait for March's turn.
What you can do while it is pending
The waiting does not cost you your place in line. When a mark registers on the Principal Register, the day you filed counts as the day your nationwide rights started. The carve-outs are anyone who was already using the mark, had already filed, or held a qualifying foreign priority claim before your filing date (15 U.S.C. 1057(c)). Sell under the name in the meantime, and use TM, which anyone may use from day one. Do not use the registered symbol: only "a registrant of a mark registered in the Patent and Trademark Office" may give that notice (15 U.S.C. 1111). What you hold in the meantime is your rights before you register, which is more than most founders think and less than a certificate.
Some doors open on a pending application and most do not. Amazon Brand Registry accepts "an active, registered trademark or a pending trademark application for your brand name or logo", issued by the trademark office of a country with an Amazon store, with the applicant as the owner and the mark a word mark or a design mark containing words (sell.amazon.com, read September 8, 2026). Amazon adds that country-specific requirements apply to the pending path, and what Brand Registry asks for before it lets you in covers the rest. Most other platform reporting forms are built around a registration number, so a pending serial number will not get you through them. Customs recordation is closed outright until you register: only registered marks may be recorded, Supplemental Register marks are excluded, and it costs $190 for each mark and each additional class (19 CFR 133).
Meanwhile the copycat does not wait for your certificate, and the claim that works today is usually not the trademark one. You own the copyright in your own product photographs from the moment you take them, and that is the fastest lever a store has while a name is pending. How the copyright in your product photographs works sets out what it covers, and which claim type covers which theft sorts the stolen-photo case from the stolen-name one. Knockoff watches new US applications while your own sits in the queue and finds the stores using your product photos, from $99 a month, with every takedown package waiting on your approval. Shopify stores only today, US trademark watch only, and nobody here is a lawyer.
How to check where your application is
Your application status lives in Trademark Status and Document Retrieval (TSDR), the USPTO's public lookup, and the serial number on your filing receipt is all you need to read it. The USPTO recommends checking every three to four months from filing until the mark registers. That is not a courtesy suggestion: deadlines run from the date a document issued, not from the date you noticed it, and an office action is a document rather than an email.
Two status lines in TSDR mean act now. One says a non-final office action has issued, which starts the three-month clock from the issue date shown, not from the day you read it. The other says the application is abandoned for failure to respond: the deadline has passed and the only route back is a petition to revive, $250 electronically, within two months of the notice of abandonment. A suspended status is not an emergency and there is nothing to answer, and a long silence after publication is normal, because the USPTO says the next official notice can take three to four months.
Questions
How long does it take to get a trademark?
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Across the roughly 174,000 US applications filed in 2022 that went on to register, half took more than 16 months and a quarter took more than 22 (Knockoff analysis of USPTO case files, September 2026, data as of April 3, 2026). Another 8 percent of that filing year was still waiting, so treat 16 months as a floor. The USPTO publishes 4.2 months to a first review and 9.7 months to registration or abandonment, both as of August 10, 2026, and answers the question itself as 12 to 18 months, last updated January 18, 2025.
What is the current wait time for a trademark application?
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As of August 10, 2026 the USPTO's published wait was 4.2 months from filing to the first examining action, against its own 5.0-month target. The same table put filing to registration or abandonment at 9.7 months against an 11.0-month target. The office adds its own hedge: "Your wait time may be less than the average or longer than the average."
How long does a trademark take to get approved?
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Approval and registration are two different days. The examining attorney approves the mark, it publishes in the Official Gazette about a month later, and the USPTO registers a use-based application within about three months after publication if nobody opposes (USPTO 1(a) timeline, last updated June 26, 2025). On an intent-to-use application, approval leads to a notice of allowance rather than a certificate.
Why is my trademark application taking so long?
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Three things hold an application, in the order you hit them: the examination queue, an office action, and a suspension behind an earlier-filed application. The USPTO's advisory committee notes that disposal pendency "may be unusually long if the USPTO suspends an application while awaiting the outcome of another matter" (TPAC 2024 annual report, November 26, 2024). A fourth cause is self-inflicted: file more than one application within three months and all of them, up to ten, queue with the first.
What is the fastest way to get a trademark?
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File a use-based application with wording from the USPTO ID Manual, keep it to one class, and answer any office action the week it arrives. A petition to make special under 37 CFR 2.146 costs $400 electronically and is, in the USPTO's own words, "an extraordinary remedy that is granted only when very special circumstances exist" (TMEP 1710.01). Wanting to sell on a particular website is named there as insufficient.
Can I use my trademark while it is pending?
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Yes. You can sell under the name, and you can use the TM symbol from day one. Only a registrant may use the registered symbol (15 U.S.C. 1111), and using it before the certificate issues is a real problem rather than a technicality. When the mark does register, your priority reaches back to your filing date under 15 U.S.C. 1057(c).
How much does a trademark cost?
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The government fee is $350 per class for an electronic base application (37 CFR 2.6), and the USPTO keeps it whether or not the mark registers. Three surcharges stack on top: $100 per class for missing information and $200 per class each for writing your own goods description and for every additional 1,000 characters. Add up the government fees for your own class count, and what a lawyer charges to file one prices the other half.
How long does a trademark last once it registers?
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Ten years at a time, for as long as you keep filing. A Section 8 declaration of use is due in the year before the sixth anniversary of registration, again in the year before the tenth, and in every ten-year period after that, with a six-month grace period and an extra fee (15 U.S.C. 1058). Each declaration is $325 per class and the Section 9 renewal is another $325. Work out when yours falls due.
Sources and dates
Every source below was read September 8, 2026, and each carries its own document date.
- Current wait times. The USPTO's trademark application timeline and processing wait times, page last updated August 26, 2026. The 4.2 and 9.7 months and their targets are dated August 10, 2026; the pre-examination, extension and statement of use queues and the same-applicant queue rule are dated July 31, 2026.
- Pendency history and targets. The Trademarks Dashboard, which publishes no last-updated date, and its data workbook, last updated July 24, 2026. USPTO, December 2, 2025 for fiscal 2025 and USPTO, May 5, 2026 for the fiscal 2026 midyear figures and the 2028 goals. The Commerce Department Office of Inspector General report, October 24, 2024, for the definition of total pendency, the year-by-year figures and the backlog growth. The TPAC 2024 annual report, November 26, 2024, for suspension and board timing.
- The process and the deadlines. The USPTO's trademark process overview, last updated August 11, 2026, and its 12 to 18 months answer, last updated January 18, 2025. The Section 1(a) and Section 1(b) timelines, last updated June 26, 2025. Both timeline pages still print older wait estimates and say so themselves, so the wait figures here come from the data page instead.
- Regulations, statutes and fees. 37 CFR 2.62 and the USPTO's notice of December 5, 2022, which dates the three-month response period to office actions issued on or after December 3, 2022. 15 U.S.C. 1063 for the thirty-day opposition window and 37 CFR 2.102 for the 180-day ceiling on extending it. 37 CFR 2.89 for the statement of use extensions. 37 CFR 2.6 for the $350 application, the surcharges, the $125 extensions, the $150 statement of use, the $400 petition, the $250 petition to revive and the $325 maintenance fees. 15 U.S.C. 1057(c) for priority back to the filing date, 15 U.S.C. 1111 for the registered symbol, 15 U.S.C. 1058 for the ten-year term and the Section 8 and Section 9 filings, and 19 CFR 133 for customs recordation. TMEP 1710.01, current edition, for the petition to make special.
- Published research and vendor pages. Gerhardt and Lee, "A Tale of Four Decades", 112 The Trademark Reporter 869 (2022), at 876 and 897, for most applications receiving an office action, the 3 percent opposed and the 46 against 60 percent registration rates. Amazon Brand Registry for its enrollment requirement.
- Our own figures. The USPTO Open Data Portal product TRTYRAP, release apc18840407-20251231, parts 61 to 91, covering 2,245,846 US-domiciled applications filed 2019 through 2024 at the April 3, 2026 snapshot, with the definitions and the limits in the method block above.
Left off deliberately: any office action rate from a secondary source, any length for a suspension, any decision time for a petition to make special, and any single pendency trend line from 2019 to 2026.
Cite this page
Pigford, Josh. "How long does it take to get a trademark." Knockoff, published September 8, 2026. https://knockoff.co/guides/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-a-trademark
Knockoff sells brand protection software and is not a neutral party. Knockoff is not a law firm and this page is general information rather than legal advice, written September 8, 2026. USPTO practice and processing times change, so read the source before you rely on a figure here.
