How Long Does a Trademark Last? Renewal Deadlines and Fees

A federal trademark registration can last forever, as long as you keep using the mark and file the maintenance documents the USPTO requires. The practical answer to “how long does a trademark last” is a set of deadlines: the first filing is due between the 5th and 6th year after registration, and renewals follow every 10 years. Miss a deadline and its six-month grace period, and the USPTO cancels the registration.

How Long a Federal Trademark Lasts

Each registration term is 10 years, and you can renew it for another 10 years as many times as you want.

Your rights in the mark come from use: if you stop using the mark, you can lose it even with a live registration, and if you keep using it without a registration, you keep common law rights in the area where you do business. The article on registered vs. unregistered trademarks explains what the registration adds on top of those rights.

The clock starts on the registration date printed on your certificate, not the date you filed. If your registration is still pending, the guide to how long it takes to get a trademark covers the steps before that date.

When Does a Trademark Expire?

For a mark registered on June 15, 2020, the schedule looks like this:

After that, the Sections 8 and 9 filing repeats between years 19 and 20, 29 and 30, and so on.

The Section 8 Declaration Between Years 5 and 6

The Section 8 declaration is a sworn statement that you are still using the mark in commerce on the goods or services listed in the registration. It is due in the year between the 5th and 6th anniversaries of the registration date. There is no renewal at this point; the Section 8 filing only proves the mark is still in use.

You must file one specimen for each class, such as a photo of the product label or a screenshot of the web page where you sell the service. If the specimen does not show the mark in use, the USPTO can refuse the filing and cancel the registration.

List only the goods and services you actually sell. If you stopped selling some of them, delete them before you file with a Section 7 request, which has no fee. Deleting goods as part of the maintenance filing or after it costs $250 per class. The USPTO also selects some registrations for a post-registration audit, which asks the owner for more proof of use in the audited classes.

If you stopped using the mark for a reason outside your control, you can file a declaration of excusable nonuse instead. You have to explain the circumstances and what you are doing to resume use. The USPTO does not accept a drop in demand for your product as an excuse on its own.

Trademark Renewal Every 10 Years

At the end of each 10-year term, you file two things together: a new Section 8 declaration of use and a Section 9 application for renewal. The window is the year before the 10-year anniversary of the registration date, then the same year before each later 10-year anniversary.

The Section 8 part has the same requirements as the first one: a sworn statement, a specimen for each class, and an accurate list of goods and services. The Section 9 part renews the registration for another 10 years.

If your US registration came through the Madrid Protocol, you file a Section 71 declaration of use with the USPTO instead of a Section 8, and you renew the international registration through the World Intellectual Property Organization instead of filing a Section 9.

How Much Does It Cost to Renew a Trademark?

Filing online, the Section 8 declaration and the Section 9 renewal are $325 per class each, so a 10-year renewal costs $650 per class. Paper filings cost more.

For a registration in two classes, the first Section 8 filing costs $650 and each 10-year renewal costs $1,300. File the 10-year renewal during the grace period and the two surcharges add $400, for $1,700.

The optional Section 15 declaration makes the registration harder to challenge on some grounds once you have used the mark continuously for five years after registration, and you can combine it with the first Section 8 declaration.

The fees above are government fees; if you hire a trademark attorney to handle the filing, see the trademark attorney cost guide for typical renewal fees. The full list of fees from application through registration is in the guide to how much it costs to trademark a name.

Grace Periods and What Happens If You Miss a Deadline

Each deadline has a six-month grace period. You can still file during those six months if you pay the surcharge, and the registration stays alive.

If the grace period ends and nothing has been filed, the USPTO cancels the registration. A cancelled registration cannot be reinstated or revived, whatever the reason for the delay. Your only option is to file a new application, pay the application fees again, and go through examination from the start. If someone else filed for a similar mark in the meantime, that application may now block yours.

If you file on time but the filing has an error, such as a missing specimen or a wrong fee, the USPTO usually lets you fix it, and some fixes carry a $100 per class deficiency surcharge.

Trademark Renewal Scams and How to Spot Them

Private companies pull owner names, addresses, and deadlines from the USPTO’s public records and mail official-looking notices to trademark owners. Many look like invoices and list fees “due” that are higher than the real USPTO fees. They often use words like “United States,” “Trademark,” “Office,” or “Agency” in their names, and some add a seal or a logo that looks like the USPTO’s.

The USPTO warns that these notices often demand immediate payment for something that is not yet due and threaten loss of your trademark rights if you do not pay. In the worst cases, the company takes the money and files nothing. In 2021, the man who ran two companies that mailed fake renewal notices was sentenced to more than four years in federal prison and ordered to pay over $4.5 million in restitution. His notices told owners their registrations would expire sooner than they would, and he never renewed any of them.

To check a notice before you pay:

1. Look at the sender. Official USPTO mail comes from the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia, and official email comes from an address ending in “@uspto.gov.”
2. Look up your registration in the USPTO’s Trademark Status and Document Retrieval system (TSDR). The USPTO posts every official communication there, and it says that if a document is not in TSDR, it is not official.
3. Compare the fee in the notice with the fee table above.
4. If you are still unsure, call the USPTO Trademark Assistance Center at 1-800-786-9199.

If you want a trademark renewal service that tracks the deadlines and files for you, hire a trademark attorney you choose yourself. You never have to use a company that contacts you first. You can renew your trademark directly with the USPTO online and pay only the government fees.

Abandonment Through Non-Use

Filing on time keeps the registration on the books, but the mark still needs real use behind it. Under the Lanham Act, a mark is abandoned when you stop using it and do not intend to resume, and three consecutive years of nonuse is presumed to be abandonment.

A competitor can use that presumption to petition to cancel your registration, even between renewal deadlines. You can rebut it with proof that you planned to resume use, but the burden shifts to you. Token sales made only to keep the registration alive do not count as use; the statute requires use in the ordinary course of trade.

If you have paused a product line or are rebranding, decide before your next deadline which goods and services you will keep in the registration. Put the date your next filing window opens in your calendar now, along with the date the grace period ends.