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The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO or Office) takes this action to set and adjust Trademark fee amounts to provide the Office with sufficient aggregate revenue to recover its aggregate cost of operations thereby maintaining a sustainable funding model. The new fee amounts will provide the Office with additional resources to ensure the integrity of the Trademark register and promote efficiency of processes while continuing to offer affordable options to stakeholders. This rule reflects feedback the Office has received throughout the rulemaking process. Initial feedback from members of the Trademark Public Advisory Committee and the public, including organizations, practitioners, and small business owners, was gathered during a public hearing held on June 5, 2023, and the public comment period following the hearing. The USPTO published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on March 26, 2024. The NPRM included a 60-day comment period that closed on May 28, 2024, and the Office is preparing a final rule that incorporates the feedback received on the NPRM.

Statement of Need:

The purpose of this rule is to set and adjust trademark fee amounts to provide sufficient aggregate revenue to cover the agency’s aggregate cost of operations. To this end, this rule creates new or changes existing fees for trademark services.

Summary of the Legal Basis:

The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), enacted in 2011, provided USPTO with the authority to set and adjust its fees for patent and trademark services. This authority was extended by the Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success (SUCCESS) Act of 2018. Since then, USPTO has conducted an internal biennial fee review, in which it undertook internal consideration of the current fee structure, and considered ways that the structure might be improved, including rulemaking pursuant to the USPTO's fee-setting authority. This fee review process involves public outreach, including, as required by the Act, a public hearing held by the USPTO's Trademark Public Advisory Committee, as well as public comment and other outreach to the user community and public in general.

Alternatives:

The alternatives are: 1) the final trademark fee schedule to set and adjust trademark fees, 2) setting fees at unit cost recovery, 3) an across the board adjustment of 27 percent, and 4) the current fee schedule (no adjustments).

Anticipated Costs and Benefits:

The proposed alternative has qualitative benefits of improved fee schedule design and securing aggregate revenue to recover aggregate cost. No costs were identified. The user fees charged by the USPTO for its services are considered transfer payments that do not affect the total resources available to society, and therefore the changes to trademark fees proposed by this rulemaking are transfers, and are not costs of this rulemaking.

Risks:

The USPTO will set and adjust trademark fee amounts to provide the Office with a sufficient amount of aggregate revenue to recover the aggregate cost of trademark operations in future years and operate within a sustainable funding model that supports the USPTO’s strategic goals and objectives. Therefore, one risk of taking no action could be that USPTO might not be able to recover its aggregate costs of operations in the long run.