Guide
Trademark attorney cost: what you pay, what it changes, and when to file it yourself
A US trademark attorney charges a median $1,000 to prepare and file one mark in one class, per the AIPLA 2023 Report of the Economic Survey (164 firms reporting 2022 charges), or $1,350 all in with the USPTO's $350 per-class fee. Median means half the firms charged less and half charged more. Filing it yourself costs $350. The top of the published range we verified is $3,350.
Does paying change the outcome? Yes, and how much depends more on the attorney's experience than on hiring one at all. Applications filed with no attorney published 63% of the time, those by the least experienced counsel 67%, and those by attorneys who had prosecuted 100 or more applications 83% (Gerhardt and Lee, 112 The Trademark Reporter 863, 897-898 (2022)). That is an experience gap, not a license gap.
By Josh Pigford, founder of Knockoff. Written . Fees and prices as of , re-checked every September.
The short version
- The government fee is $350 per class and is the same whoever types it in. Everything above it is somebody's professional fee.
- A US-domiciled applicant is never required to hire an attorney. One domiciled outside the United States is, by rule, since August 3, 2019.
- The flat fee usually stops at the filing receipt. Ask one question of any quote: does it cover a substantive office action?
- Registration is not enforcement. The recurring bill after the certificate issues is watching and takedowns.
How much does it cost to hire a lawyer to file a trademark
Two bills, and every confused quote on the internet fails to separate them. The government fee is $350 per class for an electronic base application, set by the fee rule at 89 FR 91062, and the USPTO keeps it whether or not the mark registers.
Three surcharges sit on the government side, all self-inflicted: $200 per class for writing your own goods description instead of taking pre-approved wording from the USPTO ID Manual, another $200 per class per additional 1,000 characters, and $100 per class for leaving out required information. They stack, so one sloppy single-class filing reaches $650, and the character surcharge repeats, so there is no fixed ceiling. Trademark Engine, with every reason to argue otherwise, warns that "the USPTO may charge $550 per class if your description does not fit the ID Manual ...". Rather than read a range, add up the government fees for your own class count.
What moves the professional half of the bill
- Class count. Every fee multiplies by it, so pick the class before you price the filing.
- Word mark or logo. Two filings, two fees. A practitioner on r/TRADEMARK, January 3, 2025: "I would start with filing the literal element only", because a redesigned logo leaves a registration you no longer use.
- How crowded the name is. A coined word draws a cheap filing. A descriptive one, a surname or anything near a live registration draws the expensive office action.
- Firm size and geography. A small regional practice and a national boutique are both on the table below.
Ten published prices for one word mark in one class, USPTO fee held separate. The professional fee is what the provider keeps.
| Tier | Provider | Professional fee | USPTO fee | All in, one class | Excludes | Source and read date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-filed | You, at Trademark Center | $0 | $350 | $350 | Everything | USPTO fee schedule, Sept 5, 2026 |
| Filing service | Trademark Engine, Basic | $149 | $350 | $499 | Office actions | trademarkengine.com, Sept 5, 2026 |
| Filing service | Trademark Angel, SAIL THROUGH | $495 | $350 | $845 | Office actions. Two classes included | trademarkangel.com, Sept 5, 2026 |
| Filing service | LegalZoom, Premium | $899 | $350 | $1,249 | Not stated on the page | legalzoom.com, Sept 5, 2026 |
| Attorney | Sherinian Law | $500 | $350 | $850 | Search, office actions | sherinianlaw.net, Sept 5, 2026 |
| Attorney | Michael Meyer Law | $600 | $350 | $1,000 per the firm, being $350 government plus $50 processing | Nothing at filing | michaelmeyerlaw.com, Sept 5, 2026 |
| Attorney | RC Trademark Company | $650 | $350 | $1,000 | Search, office actions, SOU | rctrademark.com, Sept 5, 2026 |
| Attorney | JPG Legal, Basic | $699 | $350 | $1,049 | Major office actions, search | jpglegal.com, Sept 5, 2026 |
| Attorney | Rapacke Law Group | $1,600, derived | $350 | $1,950 all inclusive | Nothing stated | arapackelaw.com, page dated Dec 5, 2025 |
| Attorney | Gerben IP | $3,000 | $350 | $3,350 | Substantive office actions. Two classes | gerbenlaw.com, Sept 5, 2026 |
Read the Excludes column before the fee column, because most of the spread is scope. Amazon caps its vetted firms at $700 for one brand in one class: the $700 ceiling Amazon sets for its vetted firms. One route sits outside the table: a Madrid Protocol application entering under Section 66(a), meaning a US application extended from an international registration, carries a USPTO fee of $600 per class and keeps a six-month office action deadline where a domestic filing gets three. This page prices US filings only; filing outward into other countries is not priced here.
Why trademark attorney fees vary so much between firms
One question separates a cheap quote from an expensive one, and it is not on any pricing page. Does the flat fee cover a substantive office action, meaning one needing a legal argument rather than an amendment? Gerben's $3,000 covers "responding to non-substantive office actions" and says so. The word to look for is substantive, and its absence is a second bill.
The search is the other line that moves. A knockout search is a quick look for an obvious blocker, free if you run it in USPTO Trademark Search. A full clearance search covers the federal register, state registries and unregistered use, priced $375 to $895 among the firms in the table and $1,800 for IdeaLegal's comprehensive review. An opinion letter is the written conclusion attached to it, which a filing platform does not produce. AIPLA's median for a search with analysis and opinion is $1,200 across 137 firms, more than the median filing.
Flat fee or hourly
Filing is quoted flat almost everywhere. Hourly is what you meet when something goes wrong. Across firm pages the band converges on $200 to $600 an hour, higher at big-city IP boutiques, with Michael Meyer Law putting the top bracket at $500 to $800 or more. Two firms publish a single number: $350 an hour at RC Trademark Company and $400 at IdeaLegal.
Practitioners disagree in public. Michael Meyer Law argues that "any attorney billing by the hour for a routine TEAS application is charging you for inefficiency. Flat fee is the right model for this work" (the form it names is now Trademark Center). An attorney on r/TRADEMARK, January 3, 2025: "with a flat-fee, the attorney will be motivated to do the least amount of work possible, which may lead to lower quality work product." The argument is really about who absorbs the office action.
The all-in arithmetic
Six routes to the same decision.
| Route | Professional fee | USPTO fee | All in | Arithmetic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Keep the unregistered mark | $0 | $0 | $0 | no filing |
| File it yourself, wording from the ID Manual | $0 | $350 | $350 | 0 + 350 |
| Cheapest filing service read here | $149 | $350 | $499 | 49 + 100 + 350 |
| Median attorney fee, AIPLA 2023 survey, 164 firms | $1,000 | $350 | $1,350 | 1,000 + 350 |
| Median published flat fee, six firms that advertise one | $674.50 | $350 | about $1,025 | 674.50 + 350 = 1,024.50 |
| Top of the verified range, Gerben IP | $3,000 | $350 | $3,350 | 3,000 + 350 |
Two medians, and they disagree by $325 for a reason worth knowing. AIPLA's is a survey of practitioners: a median charge of $1,000 to prepare and file, on 164 responses, 25th percentile $750, 75th $1,250. Ours is a list of advertised prices. Across the six US law firms in the table above that publish a single-class filing fee, the median professional fee is $674.50, or $1,024.50 with the USPTO's $350 fee added (Knockoff, six published prices read September 5, 2026). Publishing a price is competing on price, which is likeliest why the advertised set lands under the survey. ContractsCounsel sits between them at $1,110 across 39 recent projects, updated August 21, 2026.
The first row is the option nobody prices. Doing nothing keeps whatever common-law rights your use has earned, and shuts you out of the marketplace brand programs, which gate on a registration, with Amazon alone taking a pending application. A one-class US trademark filing runs $350 to $3,350 all in as of September 2026, a 9.6-times spread over identical paperwork.
One more signal, the only one where attorneys quote each other in public: "I charge $599 for a single trademark application and $999 for two trademarks (like a name and a logo). Government fees are separate, of course", and "most folks I know are charging between $1-2k in fees, per mark" (both January 3, 2025). Public posts rather than verified transactions, and they bracket the same $1,000 the survey found.
The tier below the table, and why it is not on it
There is a cheaper tier than $149, and the USPTO has ruled on it: "only trademark owners or their U.S.-licensed attorneys can file documents or conduct proceedings before the USPTO" (page updated September 8, 2025). A vendor that is neither may not do what it charges you for.
On January 25, 2022 the Commissioner for Trademarks signed a sanctions order against Abtach Ltd., 360 Digital Marketing LLC and Retrocube LLC, finding "an egregious scheme to deceive and defraud both the USPTO and individual applicants in more than 5,500 trademark applications", including the unauthorized practice of law, and terminating every application in its Exhibit A. Who absorbed that should decide your tier: "the acts and omissions of a representative who files documents with the USPTO, including a representative not authorized under USPTO rules, are imputed to the applicant." The customers lost their filings and their filing dates. The USPTO publishes its sanctions orders, so checking a vendor costs a minute.
What the outcomes look like with and without an attorney
Across 2,202,214 U.S.-domiciled trademark applications filed 2017 to 2022, Knockoff's read of USPTO records shows 60.4% of attorney-filed applications registered against 39.2% of self-filed ones (as of 2026-09-05).
The same group in full. Of the 1,521,841 applications carrying an attorney of record, 60.42% registered, 37.19% died and 2.39% are still pending; 57.04% drew at least one office action, meaning the USPTO letter raising a problem with the application, 24.56% died after drawing one and 12.64% died without ever drawing one. Of the 680,373 filed pro se, meaning with no attorney of record, 39.18% registered, 58.41% died and 2.41% are still pending; 64.55% drew an office action, 45.50% died after one and 12.91% died without one. That is 21 more registrations for every 100 applications filed with an attorney. Median time to registration runs the other way, 13.7 months against 11.4, and the reason is not slower work: the applications that arrive with an attorney are different to begin with, more often intent-to-use and multi-class, 57.1% against 47.7% and 22.0% against 9.8% (Knockoff analysis of USPTO bulk data, as of 2026-09-05).
The window stops at 2022 because 2023 and 2024 filings are still resolving, 14.6% and 28.9% unsettled, so their shares would be floors. The group is US-domiciled because a foreign-domiciled applicant has needed US counsel since August 3, 2019, which pushed the foreign self-filed share from 38.01% in 2017 to 6.16% in 2024; combine the domiciles and a regulatory change masquerades as an effect of hiring a lawyer. Recut for 2017 across all domiciles, this run reproduces the census published beside the odds an application draws an office action to 0.03 of a point.
60.4% vs 39.2%
the share that registered, with an attorney of record and without: 21 more registrations for every 100 applications
An attorney of record is whoever is named on the file today, which is not proof that an attorney drafted the application: a self-filer who hired someone only to answer an office action counts as represented here. The two groups differ in more than representation, so this is an association and not a cause. Nothing here is a count of refusal grounds, because no USPTO bulk trademark product records them. Knockoff analysis of USPTO bulk data, as of 2026-09-05.
Read this as an association and not as a cause. Nobody filed the same mark twice, once alone and once through counsel, and the attorney flag is undated, so a self-filer who hired someone only to answer an office action counts here as represented. Restrict both groups to files where representation never changed and the gap narrows but does not close: 54.4% against 37.4% instead of 60.4% against 39.2%. Where the data came from, and what it cannot tell you sets out every limit.
Does hiring a trademark attorney change the outcome
Start with where the gap opens, because it is not where anyone selling a filing says it is. Self-filed applications draw more office actions than represented ones, not fewer: 64.55% against 57.04%. What separates the two groups is what happens next: of those that drew one, 70.48% of self-filed applications died, against 43.05% of represented ones.
Almost the whole registration gap (60.4% against 39.2%) is applications that died after an office action (24.6% against 45.5%), while death without an office action is effectively identical, 12.91% and 12.64%. The event code "FAILURE TO RESPOND OR LATE RESPONSE" killed 41.5% of self-filed applications against 16.9% of represented ones, and that difference in applications abandoned by simply not answering is bigger than the difference in registrations (Knockoff analysis of USPTO bulk data, as of 2026-09-05). The money buys the reply to the examining attorney, not the form.
The published research agrees on the shape from a different window. Gerhardt and Lee, at 112 The Trademark Reporter 863: "while 46% of pro se applicants succeed in registering their marks, the registration rate jumps to 60% for those represented by counsel", with 63% of self-filed applications reaching publication against over 80% filed by counsel. Our own publication rates, measured on a different set of applications and on US-domiciled ones only, run 80.25% against 55.99%, a ratio of 1.43. The 2013 predecessor study pointed the same direction; no copy we could open is readable, so none of its figures appear here.
Their Figure XV is the part worth acting on. Success rates rise "modestly to 67% and 51% for the least experienced attorneys" and, "for attorneys who prosecuted 100 or more applications ... jump to 83% for publication and 62% for registration." Volume is not experience: names on 10,000 or more applications show 77% publication and 62% registration, so the drop lands entirely in publication, which the authors suggest may follow from high-volume firms advertising low-cost prosecution.
Two more findings. "Most unsuccessful trademark applications (51%) were thwarted by an office action", and of those that could not overcome a final one, 44% were self-filed against a 26% self-filed share of filings, roughly 1.7 times overrepresented (Gerhardt and Lee, 112 The Trademark Reporter 863, 894-897 (2022)). And a large slice of the gap is not legal skill: when a published mark fails to register, 84% of the time nobody filed a statement of use, the filing that turns an allowed intent-to-use application into a registration, usually because the brand was dropped. That is a founder who changed their mind, not a founder who lost an argument. If you file on intent to use, the second deadline after your mark is allowed goes in the calendar the day the notice of allowance arrives.
Put the halves together. The premium over filing alone is roughly $650 to $1,000 on top of the $350 the government takes either way, against registration going from 46% to 60% (Gerhardt and Lee, 112 The Trademark Reporter 863, 897 (2022)). The lift is uneven: 46% to 51% at the least experienced end, 46% to 62% at the most. The question is which attorney, and what a dead application costs this brand.
That last figure is the one only you can fill in. We can price the refiling: another $350 to the USPTO and another professional fee at the same median, so $1,350 again. The rest has no published number and belongs on your own spreadsheet, because a name you abandon takes the domain, the packaging, the marketplace listings and every month of use you built under it.
What the fee never buys: a faster examination, a different examining attorney, or any outcome at all. Nor an enforcement right you did not have, because what you already own before you file anything is more than most founders think and less than a registration.
Should I hire a lawyer to file a trademark, or file it myself
Hire counsel if your search turns up anything close, if the mark is descriptive or a surname, if you need more than one class, or if a refusal or demand letter has arrived. File it alone if all five conditions below hold. When you do hire, how many applications the person has filed matters more than whether you hired anyone: 51% registration at the least experienced end against 62% at 100 or more.
One hard rule first. Under 37 CFR 2.11(a), an applicant, registrant or party to a Board proceeding domiciled outside the United States "must be represented by an attorney ... who is qualified to practice" before the USPTO, effective August 3, 2019 at 84 FR 31498. For everyone else the office answers its own question and then argues with itself: "No, if you are a trademark applicant, registrant, or party domiciled in the United States or its territories. Nevertheless, we strongly encourage you to hire a U.S.-licensed attorney who specializes in trademark law" (USPTO, page last modified October 10, 2024).
The rule that can output "file it yourself"
All five have to be true. One false answer and you are in the other list.
- 1. The mark is a coined or arbitrary word. An invented word, or an ordinary one with nothing to do with what you sell. Not descriptive, not a surname, not a slogan.
- 2. Your own knockout search comes back genuinely empty. Search USPTO Trademark Search for the string and its close spellings in your class, reading live registrations rather than dead. Empty means nothing similar on related goods, not nothing identical: how close is too close for a brand name is that test written out.
- 3. One class covers what you sell, and the ID Manual has your wording. Writing your own costs $200 more per class and hands the examining attorney something to object to.
- 4. You are already selling under the name, with a clean specimen. A use-based filing skips the statement of use, its $150 per class fee and the deadline behind that 84%. A product page showing the mark on the goods is a specimen; a business card is not.
- 5. You can afford to lose the $350. The government keeps the fee whatever happens.
That is close to the one attorney publishing it against his own interest. Michael Meyer, who sells a $1,000 flat-fee filing, writes that self-filing is low risk where "your mark is a coined, distinctive word with no close matches anywhere (a thorough search you conduct yourself comes up genuinely empty), your goods fit cleanly in one class with standard identifications, and you're comfortable that a lost $350 government fee is an acceptable worst case if you've misjudged."
The common DTC case, worked. You sell one product line from a Shopify store and one marketplace. The brand is a coined word, your search turns up nothing close on related goods, and the goods sit in one class with ID Manual wording. You have sold for eight months, so the specimen is a live product page. That is a $350 filing, and the money is better spent on the clearance search than the form.
Where the answer flips matches what the data says fails. A Section 2(d) refusal, where the examining attorney says your name is too close to a registered one, is answered with evidence and argument, not paperwork. A descriptiveness refusal is answered by argument, by a claim of acquired distinctiveness, or by amendment to the Supplemental Register, the USPTO's second register for marks not yet distinctive enough. An opposition at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) is litigation with discovery and briefing. A demand letter from a funded company is a posture question. None of it is the application form.
If you sell on Amazon, the timing changes. Brand Registry requires an active registered trademark or a pending application filed with a government IP office in a country where Amazon runs a store, and it accepts the pending one, which shortens the wait considerably. A Shopify-only founder can wait; an Amazon seller has a reason to file now, and what Brand Registry asks for before it lets you in lists the rest.
One free resource exists for the self-filing branch and almost nobody uses it: the USPTO's Trademark Assistance Center answers procedural questions on 1-800-786-9199. No legal advice, but it beats guessing.
When something goes wrong, and what that costs
How much does an office action response cost
There is no USPTO fee to answer one. The cost is professional time, and the price turns on whether the refusal is procedural or substantive: the same document runs $250 to $3,500, fourteen times, depending who is answering. AIPLA's surveyed median for trademark prosecution short of an appeal is $1,500 across 133 firms.
| Provider | Procedural | Substantive | Source, read Sept 5, 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sherinian Law | $250 routine | $999 confusion refusal | sherinianlaw.net |
| RC Trademark Company | $275 to $500 | $350 to $1,500, capped at $1,200 | rctrademark.com |
| JPG Legal | in the $699 package | $850 full length, $450 shorter argument | jpglegal.com |
| IdeaLegal | $400 an hour | $400 an hour | idealegal.com, read Sept 3, 2026 |
| Rapacke Law Group | in the $1,950 package | $1,500 to $3,500, their stated market range | arapackelaw.com |
The clock is the part people lose, and it runs in three steps.
- 1. Three months from the issue date, for office actions issued on or after December 3, 2022, under 37 CFR 2.62(a)(1). Madrid Section 66(a) applications keep six months.
- 2. One three-month extension, to six months total, $125 per class. Not automatic: you request it and pay before the original deadline runs.
- 3. Miss both and the application goes abandoned. Reviving it is a $250 petition, if the USPTO accepts the reason.
What a statement of use costs
Filing before you sell is cheaper on day one and dearer in total. After the notice of allowance:
- Statement of use, $150 per class to the USPTO.
- Each six-month extension, $125 per class, up to the five allowed under 15 U.S.C. 1051(d)(2), which is $625 in extensions alone.
- Attorney time, a surveyed median of $500 across 142 firms (AIPLA 2023).
What an opposition or a lawsuit costs
Oppositions are rare and expensive when they arrive. Gerhardt and Lee report that "only about 3% are challenged through opposition proceedings", and filing one costs $600 per class at the Board. Below is the AIPLA 2023 median attorney cost, with the number of firms reporting each one.
| Stage | Median | Firms reporting |
|---|---|---|
| TTAB appeal from a final refusal, briefed | $3,000, wide spread | 53 |
| Opposition or cancellation, through the petition | $5,000 | 56 |
| Opposition or cancellation, through the end of discovery | $60,000 | 47 |
| Opposition or cancellation, inclusive of all costs | $100,000 | 47 |
| Suit under $1M, initial case management | $15,000 | 38 |
| Suit under $1M, through discovery and motions | $150,000 | 35 |
| Suit under $1M, through trial and appeal | $250,000 | 32 |
The step before all that is a demand letter, priced at $400 by RC Trademark Company on an undated page we could not re-open, and the one item here with a free substitute: draft the letter yourself in a browser, and read what a lawyer's demand letter is actually worth first. If what was taken is a photograph rather than a name, which claim type covers which theft sorts that out before you pay anyone.
The bill that never stops
A registration is a right to object. It is not a person objecting. The certificate does not find the store selling your product under your name.
| Item | Price | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Watch service, the one vendor publishing a rate | $249 a year | legalzoom.com, read Sept 5, 2026 |
| Section 8 declaration, years 5 to 6 | $325 per class | USPTO fee schedule |
| Section 15, optional | $250 per class | USPTO fee schedule |
| Section 9 renewal, year 10 and every 10 | $325 per class | USPTO fee schedule |
| Attorney, Sections 8 and 15 together | median $600 | AIPLA 2023 survey, 133 firms |
| Attorney, renewal | median $600 | AIPLA 2023 survey, 119 firms |
| Ten-year total per class, government plus attorney medians | $2,100 | Knockoff arithmetic: 325 + 250 + 325 + 600 + 600 |
For your class count and renewal dates, what maintenance costs at year five and year ten does that arithmetic.
Knockoff watches new US applications daily and finds the stores using your product photographs, 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.
Where the data came from, and what it cannot tell you
The prices. We read each on the provider's own page on September 5, 2026, except the Amazon IP Accelerator and IdeaLegal pages, read September 3. A second pass could not re-open three, marked in the table: Trademark Angel, Sherinian Law and RC Trademark Company. Only Michael Meyer Law and Rapacke Law Group carry a date we can rely on; Sherinian's byline predates the fee structure its own page quotes, so we cite our read date. Rapacke's $1,600 is our arithmetic, their $1,950 all-inclusive figure minus $350, and nothing here treats a published flat fee as a final price.
The medians. AIPLA's come from the 2023 Report of the Economic Survey, reporting 2022 charges; the 2025 edition is paywalled, so we quote nothing from it. Ours is arithmetic over six advertised prices, sorted 500, 600, 650, 699, 1600, 3000, whose median is the mean of 650 and 699. Advertised prices are not a survey of what anybody paid, which is why the survey median leads. Gerhardt and Lee cover 9,189,498 applications filed 1981 through 2020, with success rates limited to those filed 1981 through 2018 that reached a final disposition. They read the whole population and state that computing statistical significance is inapposite, so no significance claim appears here.
The applications we counted. We pulled parts 57 to 87 of the USPTO Open Data Portal product TRTYRAP, "Trademark Full Text XML Data (No Images), Annual Applications", release apc18840407-20251231. 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 2017 through 2022 with a US-domiciled applicant, 2,202,214 of them. No 79-series serials appear, so Madrid Section 66(a) extensions are absent by construction, verified at 0 rows.
Definitions and how we counted. We read each definition from the file's own description text. Registered means a registration number present and not 0000000; dead means an abandonment event with no registration number; an office action is at least one CNRT, "NON-FINAL ACTION WRITTEN"; a suspension is CNSL and a final refusal is CNFR. Outcomes are mutually exclusive, registered over dead over pending, and attorney of record means the case file header carries an attorney name. Three counts agree: the registration number gives 60.42% against 39.18%, R.PR and R.SR transaction events on a separate code path give 60.43% against 39.20%, and status codes 700 to 729 give 60.24% against 39.02%, with the same application counts across all three. Recounting office actions with GNRT instead of CNRT agrees to 0.12 of a point. The scripts sit at .seo/briefs/trademark-attorney-cost-scripts/, and we re-cut every September.
There is no Section 2(d) refusal rate here, and nobody else can compute one. No USPTO bulk trademark product carries a refusal-ground field, and the office-action codes record that an action issued, never why. The nearest signals are the suspension rate, 5.41% for represented applications against 3.08% for self-filed, and the final-refusal rate, 9.44% against 7.47%. Both run higher for represented applications, because an application somebody is arguing survives long enough to collect them. Treat both as colour.
Known limits. Filing mills sit inside the represented group, so 60.4% is an average across everyone with a name in that field. This is a census of a filing-date window, not a sample. "Office action" is not "refusal": the event covers plain requirements about the goods description, a disclaimer, a specimen or the entity type. Every published cell holds more than 12,000 rows, and no row carries mark text, owner names or attorney names.
Questions
How much does a trademark attorney cost?
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A median $1,000 to prepare and file one mark in one class, per the AIPLA 2023 Report of the Economic Survey (164 firms reporting 2022 charges), or $1,350 all in once you add the USPTO's $350 per-class fee. Published prices run wider than the median: as of September 2026 a one-class filing costs $350 to $3,350 all in, depending on whether you file it yourself, use a filing service or hire a firm.
What does an IP lawyer cost per hour?
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Trademark work is mostly flat fee, so an hourly rate is what you pay when something goes wrong. Across firm pages the band converges on $200 to $600 an hour, higher at big-city IP boutiques. Two firms publish a single number: RC Trademark Company at $350 an hour, on a page we could not re-open, and IdeaLegal at $400. Patent work prices higher, and what a design patent costs and how long it takes sets out that side.
Is TEAS Plus still the cheaper way to file?
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No, and any page still quoting it is out of date. The final rule at 89 FR 91062 lists "Application (TEAS Plus), per class ... 250" and "Application (TEAS Standard), per class ... 350" with the instruction "Discontinue". Since January 18, 2025 there has been one base fee of $350 per class plus surcharges, filed through the USPTO's Trademark Center.
What cannot be trademarked?
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A generic word for the thing you sell, because no seller may own the name of the product itself. A mark that merely describes the goods, unless buyers have come to treat it as your brand. And a functional product feature, which is patent territory. Those refusals are the expensive kind to answer, which is why a coined word is both the cheapest mark to file and the strongest to own.
Can I have a trademark without an LLC?
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Yes. An individual or a sole proprietor can own a federal registration, and the owner has to be whoever actually uses the mark in commerce. Forming an LLC creates a state business record and no trademark rights. On ordering: settle the entity first if you are forming one anyway, because the application names an owner and changing it later means recording an assignment.
Do trademark lawyers charge for a consultation?
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It varies, and the answer is usually on the page you are booking from. Flat-fee packages tend to fold the call into the fee, because the fee is the product. Hourly firms more often bill the first meeting. Ask what the call costs before you book it.
Can I make the copycat pay my legal fees?
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Rarely. 15 U.S.C. 1117(a) says "the court in exceptional cases may award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party", and "may" is doing work there. Octane Fitness v. ICON Health and Fitness, 572 U.S. 545 (2014), defines an exceptional case as "one that stands out from others with respect to the substantive strength of a party's litigating position ... or the unreasonable manner in which the case was litigated". Budget as though you are paying your own bill.
Sources and dates
Every source below was read September 5, 2026, except the Amazon IP Accelerator and IdeaLegal pages, read September 3, 2026.
- Fees. The final rule setting trademark fees, 89 FR 91062, effective January 18, 2025, for the $350 base fee, the $100 and $200 surcharges, the retirement of TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard, the $150 statement of use, the $325 Sections 8 and 9, the $250 Section 15 and the $250 petition to revive. The USPTO fee schedule for the $600 Section 66(a) and opposition fees and the $125 extension, fee code 7016. Its header reads "Effective January 19, 2025", which is the patent rule at 89 FR 91898; the trademark rule is January 18. Neither carries a line item for an office action response.
- Regulations and statutes. 37 CFR 2.11 and 84 FR 31498, effective August 3, 2019. 37 CFR 2.62 and the USPTO's December 3, 2022 notice for the deadline and the Madrid carve-out. 15 U.S.C. 1051(d)(2) for the five extensions. 15 U.S.C. 1117(a) and Octane Fitness, 572 U.S. 545 (2014), for fee awards.
- USPTO pages and the sanctions order. Why hire a private trademark attorney, modified October 10, 2024, for both quoted answers, and Recognizing common scams, updated September 8, 2025, for who may file. The order against Abtach Ltd., 360 Digital Marketing LLC and Retrocube LLC, signed January 25, 2022 by Commissioner David S. Gooder. The USPTO's separate August 2025 action covering more than 52,000 applications is not merged into it.
- Published data. Gerhardt and Lee, "A Tale of Four Decades", 112 The Trademark Reporter 863 (2022), at 894 to 899. Gerhardt and McClanahan, 16 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 583 (2013), pointed the same direction; no figure from it is quoted, because the hosted PDF is a scan with no text layer. The AIPLA Report of the Economic Survey, 2023 edition reporting 2022 charges, for the $1,000 filing, $1,200 clearance, $1,500 prosecution, $500 statement of use, $600 Sections 8 and 15, $600 renewal, $3,000 TTAB appeal, the $5,000, $60,000 and $100,000 opposition figures and the $15,000, $150,000 and $250,000 litigation medians. The number of firms reporting each, in that order: 164, 137, 133, 142, 133, 119, 53, 56, 47, 47, 38, 35 and 32.
- Prices. Each provider's own page, with its read date, in the table above, plus idealegal.com and sell.amazon.com. Michael Meyer Law is also the source of the self-filing conditions and the flat-fee argument, and ContractsCounsel of the $1,110 average across 39 projects, updated August 21, 2026. The practitioner prices are public posts on r/TRADEMARK dated January 3, 2025, quoted as one person's account rather than a market rate.
- Our own figures. The USPTO Open Data Portal product TRTYRAP, release apc18840407-20251231, parts 57 to 87, with the group of applications, event codes, counts and limits above.
Left off deliberately: any figure from the paywalled 2025 AIPLA survey, and any number from the 2013 Stanford study.
Cite this page
Pigford, Josh. "Trademark attorney cost: what you pay, what it changes, and when to file it yourself." Knockoff, published September 5, 2026. https://knockoff.co/guides/trademark-attorney-cost
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 5, 2026. Fee schedules, published prices and USPTO practice all change, so read the source before you rely on a figure here.
