USPTO Fee Increases and Rule Changes for 2017
Alt Legal Team | January 19, 2017
Effective January 14th, the USPTO enacted a number of changes, including increases in trademark and TTAB fees and procedural changes for trademark services.
The most substantial fee increases are for the initial application fee for paper filings, which increased by $225 per filing per class. The initial application for registration filed using TEAS also increased by $75 to $400. All the fee changes were increases except for those for electronic extensions, which decreased from $150 to $125.
Other increases include the processing fee for applications that fail to meet the requirements for TEAS Plus or TEAS RF. Common reasons for not meeting the requirements include:
(1) Not providing all necessary documents electronically;
(2) Not providing a translation statement;
(3) Failing to maintain a current email address; and
(4) Not providing a color claim and description.
The fees for these failures increased from $50 to $125 per class.
It is important to note that fees are not tied to the filing date, so the new fees will apply to classes added or deficiencies corrected on existing trademarks.
In addition to the fee increases, the USPTO will implement other changes as well. The foreign registration number character limit has been increased to 19. The TEAS form will now also offer enhanced error messaging to alert filers of missing information.
TEAS signature forms have also been updated. They will require users to sign their full names between slashes. Example: /Nehal Madhani/ as opposed to Nehal/Madhani/ or other variants.
The forms for Applications for registration, Allegations of use, and Post-registration affidavits or declarations of continued use or excusable non-use have also been reformatted to be easier to understand. For example, on the declaration section of the application form, the filer will need to check boxes next to each statement, as illustrated below
The TEASi international application system has also been updated to include Brunei Darussalam.
The USPTO encourages filers with questions to email [email protected].