Will CGPDTM India hike the trademark fee followed by USPTO?

Trademark Fee Adjustments in the U.S.: A 2025 Overview

Effective January 18, 2025, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will implement a new trademark fee structure, introducing changes to ensure the financial sustainability of its operations while aligning fees with service costs. Below is a detailed breakdown of the changes in trademark fees.

Key Fee Changes

The new structure replaces some existing fees, introduces additional charges for certain application behaviors, and adjusts post-registration fees. The highlights are summarized in the table below:

Description	Current Fee	New Fee	Change ($)	Percent Change (%)
Trademark Application Filing Fees
Paper Application (per class)	$750	$850	$100	13%
Base Application (electronic, per class)	N/A	$350	N/A	N/A
Application via WIPO (per class)	$500	$600	$100	20%
Surcharge Fees
Insufficient Information (per class)	N/A	$100	N/A	N/A
Free-form Text Entry (per class)	N/A	$200	N/A	N/A
Additional 1,000 Characters in Free-form	N/A	$200	N/A	N/A
Post-Registration Maintenance Fees
Section 8 Declaration (electronic, per class)	$225	$325	$100	44%
Section 9 Renewal (electronic, per class)	$300	$325	$25	8%
Section 15 Declaration (electronic, per class)	$200	$250	$50	25%
Other Adjustments
Letter of Protest	$50	$150	$100	200%
Petition to Revive (electronic)	$150	$250	$100	67%

Policy Objectives

1. Streamlining Applications: The base application replaces the TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard systems, incentivizing applicants to provide complete and accurate information.
2. Encouraging Efficiency: Surcharges for free-form text entry and lengthy descriptions aim to reduce examination time and costs.
3. Supporting Sustainability: Adjusted fees align with the actual costs of trademark services while maintaining access for small businesses and individual applicants.

Stakeholder Impacts

The new fee structure encourages precise and efficient filings, which benefit both applicants and examiners by improving the speed and reliability of trademark processing. Additional fees for incomplete or inefficient submissions are designed to recover associated costs while promoting best practices in trademark applications.

For more details, visit the USPTO’s Fee Setting and Adjusting page.

India’s CGPDTM last revised its trademark fee structure on March 6, 2017 from Rs. 3500 to Rs. 4500 for individuals, start-ups and micro-to-medium MSMEs and Rs. 9000 for others, under the Trademark Rules, 2017. These changes were implemented to simplify the trademark registration process, increase efficiency, and encourage electronic filings.

Key Revisions in Trademark Fees:

1. Application Fees:
   • Startups, Small Enterprises, Individuals: ₹4,500 for e-filing and ₹5,000 for physical filing (per class).
   • Other Entities (e.g., Corporates): ₹9,000 for e-filing and ₹10,000 for physical filing (per class).
2. Expedited Processing:
   • A new process for expedited trademark registration was introduced:
     • ₹20,000 for startups, small enterprises, and individuals.
     • ₹40,000 for all other applicants.
3. Trademark Renewal:
   • Renewal fees were set at ₹9,000 for e-filing and ₹10,000 for physical filing.
   • Late renewal required an additional fee of ₹9,000, making it ₹18,000 for e-filing and ₹20,000 for physical filing.
4. Encouragement of E-filing:
   • A 10% discount on fees was applied to encourage electronic filing.
5. Simplification:
   • The number of forms was reduced from 75 to 8, making the process more straightforward.
6. Well-Known Trademarks:
   • Filing a request to have a mark included in the list of well-known trademarks required a fee of ₹1,00,000​

India has been making consistent investment to modernize its infracstructure with implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ease the filing process and improvize the disposal timeline and is expected to increase the fee sooner or later.