Trademark Classes Explained: How to Pick the Right Class

Each class in your application adds a separate USPTO filing fee, and your registration protects the name only for the goods and services you list in those classes. There are 45 trademark classes, set by an international treaty called the Nice Agreement: classes 1 to 34 are goods and classes 35 to 45 are services. If you file in too few classes, part of the business goes unprotected, and each extra class you can’t support with real use is money spent for nothing.

What Trademark Classes Are

A trademark class is a numbered category of goods or services. The USPTO uses the Nice Classification, the same system most trademark offices around the world use, so class 25 means clothing, footwear, and headwear in the US and in the countries that follow the treaty.

Each class has a short official heading. Class 25 is “Clothing, footwear, headwear.” Class 43 is “Services for providing food and drink; temporary accommodation.” The specific items you sell go in your identification of goods and services, the written list in your application (for example, “t-shirts, hats, and hooded sweatshirts” in class 25).

A registration for coffee in class 30 does not by itself give you a registration for coffee shop services, which sit in class 43.

Goods Classes vs. Services Classes

The USPTO defines goods as products your customers buy from you, such as bicycles or candles. Services are activities you perform for someone else, such as bicycle repair or catering.

A t-shirt is a class 25 good, but printing custom designs on customers’ t-shirts is a class 40 service, according to the USPTO’s own example. Ask whether the customer is buying a thing from you or paying you to do something.

The Classes Small Businesses Use Most

The seven classes below cover apparel, software, retail and marketing, education and entertainment, food service, and beauty and health care.

Which Class Is Clothing?

Clothing, shoes, and hats are class 25. Bags, backpacks, and luggage are class 18, and jewelry is class 14, so an apparel brand that also sells tote bags needs a second class for them.

Which Class Is Software?

Software sits in two classes, depending on how you deliver it. Software the customer downloads or installs, including mobile apps, is class 9. Software the customer uses online without downloading it, such as a SaaS platform, is class 42. A company with a downloadable app and a web platform files in both.

Which Class Is a Service Business?

Consulting and marketing fall in class 35, coaching and training in class 41, restaurants in class 43, beauty and health care in class 44, and legal and security services in class 45. Find your service in the full list at the end, then search the ID Manual for the exact wording.

How to Pick Your Classes

1. List what you sell under the name, and what you will sell within the next year or two. Include products and services separately.
2. Search the USPTO’s Trademark ID Manual for each item. It gives pre-approved descriptions with the class already assigned, so the ID Manual decides the class for you, and using its entries avoids the USPTO surcharge for free-form descriptions.
3. Group the items by class. The number of groups is the number of classes you need.
4. Cut any class where you have no real use and no firm plan. You must either use the mark on those goods or services or have a good-faith intent to use it.
5. Check the ID Manual entries you chose against how you actually sell. “Downloadable” and “non-downloadable” wording, for example, moves a product between class 9 and class 42.

Take a candle company that sells candles on its own website and runs candle-making workshops. Candles are class 4 goods. Workshops are class 41 education services. Selling its own candles on its own website needs no class 35 filing, because class 4 covers the candles wherever they are sold. A shop that sells candles from many makers would add class 35 retail store services.

The step-by-step guide to trademarking a business name walks through the search and the rest of the application.

How Classes Affect Your Cost

Yes, each class costs extra: the USPTO’s base fee is $350 per class, so a two-class application starts at $700 before any surcharges or attorney fees. The breakdown of every government fee is in the guide to what it costs to trademark a name.

Filing in Too Many or Too Few Classes

Too Few Classes

Under USPTO rules (37 C.F.R. 2.71(a)), you can clarify or narrow your identification of goods and services after you file, but you cannot broaden it. If you leave out a class you needed, the fix is a new application with a new filing fee and a later filing date, and anyone who files for a similar mark in that class in the meantime gets ahead of you.

Too Many Classes

Each class you add needs proof that you use the mark on those goods or services before it registers. With an intent-to-use application, you file that proof after the USPTO approves the mark, and the fees for that filing are also charged per class. A class you never use either gets deleted before registration, and the fee you paid for it is gone, or it stays in the registration without the use behind it, which makes the registration open to challenge.

More classes also mean more places for a conflict with an existing mark, which can slow the application down. The timeline for a normal application, and what causes delays, is in the article on how long it takes to get a trademark.

If your business spans several classes and you are not sure which ones matter, a short consultation with a trademark attorney can settle the class list before you pay filing fees. You can find a trademark attorney in the directory.

Full List of All 45 Classes

This trademark classes list follows the official Nice Classification headings the USPTO uses. The short descriptions condense each heading; the ID Manual gives the exact approved wording for your application.