Federal registration

Owning your logo stops copying. Registering it stops competitors.

A US trademark is the right to stop someone else trading under a name confusingly close to yours, anywhere in the country. Our legal desk runs the clearance search, works out your classes, files the application with the USPTO in your name, and answers the examiner when they write back.

Start with a clearance search How many classes do I need?

$599: Filing service, once
$350: Per class of goods or services
+ USPTO fee: Government fee, paid at cost

Prices exclude California sales tax of 8.25%, added at invoice.

LogoOrbit · Legal Compliance Department

Trademark Application &
Prosecution File

Filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office

Serial number: SAMPLE-00000000
Filing basis: Use / intent to use
Applicant of record
The mark
Classes applied for

Identification of goods and services

The applicant requests registration of the mark shown herein on the Principal Register, for the goods and services identified in each class listed above, and claims priority from the filing date.

Illustration of the file we prepare and keep for you. Not a USPTO document.

Why this matters

A name is the one asset you can lose to somebody else

You can lose a supplier and find another. You can lose a website and rebuild it in a fortnight. The name over the door is different: if another business registers it first, you do not get to keep using it, however long you were there. Six reasons this sits near the top of the list.

It is the only thing that makes a copycat stop

Owning your logo means nobody can copy the artwork. It does not stop a competitor two states away opening under a confusingly similar name and taking your calls. A federal registration is what turns "please stop" into a letter their lawyer takes seriously.

It works everywhere in the country, from day one

Trading under a name gives you rights only where people actually know you. A registration gives you a claim across all fifty states from the filing date — including in the cities you have not opened in yet.

Marketplaces ask for the registration number

Amazon Brand Registry, and the equivalent programmes at other marketplaces, gate their brand-protection tools behind a registered mark. Without one you are filing takedown requests as a member of the public.

It is the cheapest hour of the whole dispute

Registering early costs a few hundred dollars. Discovering at year three that somebody else registered your name first costs you the name — the signage, the domain, the packaging, the search rankings, and every customer who cannot find you afterwards.

It turns a brand into an asset on the books

A registered mark can be valued, licensed, franchised, borrowed against and sold. Investors and buyers ask for the registration number in the first round of diligence, and an unregistered name is a discount they will find.

Priority is decided by who filed first, not who is right

The register does not reward the business that had the better idea. It rewards the one that got its date in first. Every month a good name sits unfiled is a month somebody else can take it.

The class finder

You are not registering a name. You are registering what it sells.

This is the part nobody explains, and it is the part that sets the price. A trademark covers a name applied to particular goods or services, sorted into 45 official classes. Pick what your business does and see the classes it usually needs, and what that comes to.

1 — What does the business do?

A single site serving food usually files one class. Add a goods class the moment you put your logo on a bottle, a bag of beans or a jar of sauce sold to take away.

These are the classes a business of this kind usually files in, not a determination about yours. The classes on your application are settled with the legal desk against your actual product and service list.

2 — The classes it usually needs

3 — What that comes to

Filing service, once: $599
Classification, 1 class × $350: $350
California sales tax, 8.25%: $78.29
LogoOrbit total: $1,027.29

Plus the USPTO government filing fee, charged per class and paid directly to the USPTO. We confirm the current amount for your class count in writing before anything is filed.

Start with the clearance search

What you are paying for

The filing is the easy part. Everything around it is the service

Included in the $599

Start to certificate

A clearance search of the federal register before anything is filed, with an honest read on your odds
A recommendation on which classes your goods and services actually fall in
The full application drafted and filed with the USPTO in your name
Your specimen of use checked against what the examiner will accept
Correspondence with the examining attorney handled by our legal desk
Status monitoring through publication, with the deadlines watched for you
The registration certificate and your file, handed over when it issues

Not included, and why

Said plainly, up front

USPTO government filing fee: Set by the government, charged per class, and paid to the USPTO rather than to us.
A guaranteed registration: No filing service can promise one. The examiner decides, and the register is the register.
International protection: A US registration is a US right. Other countries are separate filings, in their own offices.
Maintenance filings later: A registration has to be kept alive at years five to six and every ten years after that.

The route through

Filing takes a week. Registration takes months

Anyone quoting you a fortnight is quoting the paperwork, not the register. Here is the real shape of it, and where the work actually falls.

1Week 1
Clearance search
We search the federal register for marks close enough to yours to matter, and tell you plainly whether to file, to adjust the mark, or to keep the money. This conversation is the most valuable part of the service.
2Week 1–2
Classes and specimen
We settle which classes your goods and services fall in, and check that your evidence of use is the kind an examiner accepts — a mocked-up logo on a blank background is the most common rejection we see.
3Filing day
The application goes in
We file with the USPTO in your name, pay the government fee on your instruction, and send you the serial number. Your priority date is set from this moment.
4Month 3–8
Examination
An examining attorney reviews the application and may raise an office action. We draft and file the response for you. This is where most self-filed applications quietly die.
5Month 6–10
Publication
A clean application is published for opposition and anyone who believes it harms them has thirty days to object. Most marks pass this window without a word.
6Month 8–18
Registration
The certificate issues, the ® symbol becomes yours to use, and we hand over the file. Then we tell you the maintenance dates, because a registration you forget to renew is a registration you lose.

Two different rights

Copyright is the artwork. A trademark is the name in the market

People ask for one and mean the other constantly. They protect different things, they are granted by different processes, and most brands eventually want both.

Copyright assignment — $499

A private, signed document

Protects: The drawing itself — the shape, the artwork, the files
Stops: Somebody reproducing your actual logo
Comes from: A signed transfer between us and you, not a government office
Exists: From the moment the work is created; the document moves who owns it

See the copyright certificate

What this page sells

Trademark filing — $599 + $350 per class

A federal government registration

Protects: The name and mark you trade under, in the classes you registered
Stops: A competitor using a confusingly similar name, even a different-looking one
Comes from: The USPTO, after examination — we prepare and prosecute the application
Exists: Once granted, and it has to be maintained and renewed to survive

Start the clearance search

Before you spend anything

The search comes first, and the answer might be no.

We would rather tell you a name is taken than take your filing fee and let an examiner tell you eight months later. Send the mark and what the business sells, and the legal desk will come back with a straight read: file it, change it, or keep your money.

Request a clearance search Ask the legal desk

LogoOrbit prepares and files trademark applications for its clients. Nothing on this page is legal advice about your own facts, and no filing service can guarantee that a mark will register.

Trademark FAQs

What people ask before they file

A trademark is never registered for a name in the abstract — it is registered for a name applied to particular goods or services. The system sorts those into 45 classes: 1 to 34 for physical goods, 35 to 45 for services. Registering "class 25 clothing" does not protect you if a rival launches a restaurant under the same name. So the number of classes is set by what your business actually sells, and each one is examined and charged separately by the USPTO, which is why our classification work is $350 per class rather than a flat fee.

Most first filings need one or two. A single-site service business is usually one. A brand that both makes a product and sells it is usually two. A food range across chilled, packaged and drinks can be three. Use the class finder on this page for a starting number, then send us your product and service list and we will tell you which classes are genuinely necessary — including when a class you asked for is not.

The filing itself, from the clearance search through to the certificate: the search and our honest read on it, drafting, the specimen check, the filing, correspondence with the examining attorney, and the deadline watching in between. It is charged once for the application, not per class and not per month, and it does not go up if the examination turns out to be a long one.

No, and be careful of anyone who implies it is. The USPTO sets its own government filing fee, charges it per class, and it is paid to them rather than to us. We tell you the current amount for your class count before you commit to anything, so the total is on the table in advance.

No. Nobody honest can. The examining attorney at the USPTO decides, and marks are refused for reasons outside anyone’s control — a similar mark already on the register, a name that merely describes the product, a specimen that does not show real use. What we can do is tell you before you spend money when the odds look bad, and we would rather lose the filing fee than take it knowing that.

They are two separate rights and neither requires the other, but they work best together. Copyright is about the artwork — who drew it and who owns it. A trademark is about the name and mark in commerce — who is allowed to trade under it. If we designed your logo, the $499 copyright assignment certificate puts the artwork in your name; this service puts the mark on the federal register. Owners who take one usually want both.

Yes, and for a simple, distinctive mark in one class, some people do exactly that. What you are paying us for is the part before the form and the part after it: knowing whether the name is clear enough to be worth filing, choosing classes that cover the business, and answering an office action when one lands. Most self-filed applications that fail, fail at that last step.

We will find it in the clearance search and tell you at that point, before an application is filed. Sometimes the answer is that the other mark is in a different class and yours is fine. Sometimes it is a small change to your mark. And sometimes the honest answer is that the name is taken and a rebrand now costs far less than a dispute in two years — we will say so.

Get the name on the register.

Send the mark, the legal name behind the business, and a list of what you sell. We come back with the search result, the classes we recommend, and the total — tax and USPTO fee included in the figure — before anything is filed.

Start my trademark - $599 I need the copyright certificate too