In short
To trademark a name in the US you check it is available, identify the classes covering your goods or services, file an application with the USPTO, respond to any office action, and prove use in commerce. Government fees are $350 per class and registration commonly takes around a year.
What Trademarking a Name Actually Protects
A trademark protects the name, logo, or slogan customers use to recognize your brand — not your business idea, and not your business entity name filed with your state. If you formed an LLC, that only reserves your name in your state's corporate registry; it does nothing to stop someone in another state, or online, from using the same name for a similar product or service.
A federally registered trademark, granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), gives you nationwide rights to that name within the goods or services categories (called "classes") you register it under.
Step 1: Search Before You File
Before spending a dollar on an application, search the USPTO's own trademark database for names that are identical or confusingly similar to yours, in the same or related industries. This is the single most common place people get rejected — not because their name is unavailable in a strict sense, but because it's too close to something already registered.
This is exactly what a free brand check is for: a preliminary look at conflict risk before you commit to filing.
Step 2: Choose the Right Trademark Class(es)
The USPTO organizes all goods and services into 45 numbered classes (for example, Class 25 covers clothing, Class 35 covers advertising/business services). You file — and pay — separately for each class your brand actually operates in. Filing under the wrong class, or too many classes "just in case," is a common and expensive mistake.
Step 3: File the Application (and What It Actually Costs)
As of a fee restructure effective January 18, 2025, the USPTO simplified its pricing: the base federal filing fee is $350 per class, replacing the older TEAS Plus/TEAS Standard two-tier system. Additional charges can apply — $100 per class for incomplete required information, or $200 per class if you write a custom (non-standard) description of your goods/services instead of picking from the USPTO's own approved list.
That $350-per-class figure is the government's fee, paid directly to the USPTO — it's separate from whatever a filing service or attorney charges to prepare and manage the application itself.
Step 4: Examination — and Where Office Actions Come From
After filing, a USPTO examining attorney reviews your application. Based on USPTO's own published Trademarks Dashboard data (updated August 2026), the average time to a first Office Action is about 4.2 months, against an internal target of 5.0 months. An Office Action is simply the examiner's formal letter raising a legal issue — most commonly "likelihood of confusion" with an existing mark, or that your proposed mark is "merely descriptive" of what you sell. It is not an automatic rejection, but it does have a strict response deadline.
If no Office Action issues (or once one is successfully resolved), your application moves to publication, where the public gets a window to formally oppose it, and then on to registration.
Step 5: How Long the Whole Process Takes
Per that same USPTO dashboard data, the average total time from filing to either full registration or abandonment is about 9.7 months, against an 11.0-month internal target. Straightforward applications with no Office Action and no opposition tend to land on the faster end of that range; anything requiring a response or an extension adds real time.
Step 6: After Registration — Maintaining It
Registration isn't the finish line. You're required to file maintenance documents (a Section 8 declaration, and eventually a combined Section 8 & 9 renewal) on a fixed schedule to keep the registration alive, and — separately from any legal requirement — it's worth actively watching for other businesses filing confusingly similar marks after you, since the USPTO does not do that policing for you.
What the law actually says about descriptive names
The single most common reason a self-filed application runs into trouble is that the name describes the product. This is not a matter of examiner preference — it is written into the statute.
No trademark by which the goods of the applicant may be distinguished from the goods of others shall be refused registration … unless it … consists of a mark which, when used on or in connection with the goods of the applicant, is merely descriptive or deceptively misdescriptive of them.
The USPTO applies this through a single question: does the wording immediately convey an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose or use of the goods? A term is merely descriptive even if it does not describe every feature, so long as it describes one significant one.
That is why a name can feel like good marketing and still be unregistrable. The clearer a name is about what you sell, the closer it sits to the line.
Selling shirts, hats or shoes? Clothing is its own USPTO category, covered in [trademarking a clothing brand and Class 25](/blog/trademark-clothing-brand-class-25).
Frequently asked questions
The USPTO's own federal filing fee is $350 per class as of the January 2025 fee restructure. On top of that government fee, most people pay a separate service or attorney fee to prepare and manage the filing — see our full cost breakdown for real numbers.
Based on USPTO's own published data, expect roughly 4-5 months to a first Office Action (if one is issued at all) and about 9.7 months on average from filing to final registration or abandonment.
Yes, it's legally possible to file directly with the USPTO yourself. Whether that's a good idea depends on how straightforward your situation is — see our honest breakdown of when DIY filing works and when it doesn't.
An Office Action is a formal letter from the USPTO examining attorney raising a legal issue with your application — most often a conflict with an existing mark or a description problem. It has a strict deadline to respond and does not mean automatic rejection.
Possibly, if the earlier use is for unrelated goods or services and there is no likelihood of confusion. Identical or near-identical names in the same category are the difficult cases. A search before filing is what tells you which situation you are in.
TM can be used by anyone claiming rights in a mark, registered or not. The circled R may only be used once the USPTO has actually registered the mark, and using it before registration is a misuse worth avoiding.
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This article is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Trademark outcomes depend on the specific facts of each application.