Setting and Adjusting Trademark Fees During Fiscal Year 2025

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>Patent and Trademark Office</SUBAGY> <CFR>37 CFR Parts 2 and 7</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. PTO-T-2022-0034]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0651-AD65</RIN> <SUBJECT>Setting and Adjusting Trademark Fees During Fiscal Year 2025</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> United States Patent and Trademark Office, Department of Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) proposes to set and adjust trademark fees, as authorized by the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), as amended by the Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success Act of 2018 (SUCCESS Act). The proposed fee adjustments will provide the USPTO sufficient aggregate revenue to recover the aggregate costs of trademark operations in future years (based on assumptions and estimates found in the agency's Fiscal Year 2025 Congressional Justification (FY 2025 Budget)), including implementing the USPTO 2022-2026 Strategic Plan (Strategic Plan). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The USPTO solicits comments from the public on this proposed rule. Written comments must be received on or before May 28, 2024 to ensure consideration. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Written comments on proposed trademark fees must be submitted through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> To submit comments via the portal, commenters should go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/PTO-T-2022-0034</E> or enter docket number PTO-T-2022-0034 on the homepage and select the “Search” button. The site will provide search results listing all documents associated with this docket. Commenters can find a reference to this notice and select the “Comment” button, complete the required fields, and enter or attach their comments. Attachments to electronic comments will be accepted in Adobe portable document format (PDF) or Microsoft Word format. Because comments will be made available for public inspection, information that the submitter does not desire to make public, such as an address or phone number, should not be included in the comments. Visit the Federal eRulemaking Portal for additional instructions on providing comments via the portal. If electronic submission of comments is not possible, please contact the USPTO using the contact information below in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this notice for special instructions. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Brendan Hourigan, Director, Office of Planning and Budget, at 571-272-8966, or <E T="03">Brendan.Hourigan@uspto.gov;</E> or C. Brett Lockard, Director, Forecasting and Analysis Division, at 571-272-0928. <E T="03">Christopher.Lockard@uspto.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Introduction</HD> The USPTO publishes this notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM or proposed rule) under section 10 of the AIA (section 10), Public Law 112-29, 125 Stat. 284, as amended by the SUCCESS Act, Public Law 115-273, 132 Stat. 4158, which authorizes the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO to set or adjust by rule any trademark fee established, authorized, or charged under the Trademark Act of 1946 (the Trademark Act), 15 U.S.C. 1051 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> as amended, for any services performed or materials furnished by the agency. Section 10 prescribes that trademark fees may be set or adjusted only to recover the aggregate estimated costs to the USPTO for processing, activities, services, and materials relating to trademarks, including administrative costs of the agency with respect to such trademark fees. Section 10 authority includes flexibility to set individual fees in a way that furthers key policy factors, while considering the cost of the respective services. Section 10 also establishes certain procedural requirements for setting or adjusting fee regulations, such as public hearings and input from the Trademark Public Advisory Committee (TPAC) and congressional oversight. TPAC held a public hearing on the USPTO's preliminary trademark fee proposals on June 5, 2023, and issued a report (TPAC Report) on August 14, 2023, containing its comments, advice, and recommendations on the preliminary fee proposals. The USPTO considered and analyzed the TPAC Report before publishing the fee proposals in this NPRM. See Part IV: Rulemaking Goals and Strategies for further discussion of the TPAC Report. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Purpose of This Action</HD> Based on a biennial review of fees, costs, and revenues that began in fiscal year (FY) 2021, the USPTO concluded that fee adjustments are necessary to provide the agency with sufficient financial resources to facilitate the effective administration of the U.S. trademark system, including implementing the Strategic Plan, available on the agency website at <E T="03">https://www.uspto.gov/StrategicPlan.</E> The individual fee proposals align with the USPTO's fee structure philosophy, including the agency's four key fee setting policy factors: (1) promote innovation strategies; (2) align fees with the full cost of trademark services; (3) set fees to facilitate the effective administration of the trademark system; and (4) offer application processing options. The proposed fee adjustments will enable the USPTO to accomplish its mission to drive U.S. innovation, inclusive capitalism, and global competitiveness by delivering high-quality and timely trademark examination and review proceedings that produce accurate and reliable trademark rights for domestic and international stakeholders. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Summary of Provisions Impacted by This Action</HD> The USPTO proposes to set and adjust 31 trademark fees, including the introduction of 12 new fees. The agency also proposes discontinuing 6 fees. Under the proposed fee schedule in this NPRM, the routine fees to obtain and maintain a trademark registration ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> application filing, intent-to-use/use (ITU) filings, and post-registration maintenance fees) will increase relative to the current fee schedule, in order to ensure financial sustainability and provide for improvements needed relative to trademark filings and registration. Additional information describing the proposed fee adjustments is included in Part V: Individual Fee Rationale in this rulemaking and in the Table of Trademark Fees—Current, Proposed, and Unit Cost (Table of Trademark Fees), available on the fee setting section of the USPTO website at <E T="03">https://www.uspto.gov/FeeSettingAndAdjusting.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Legal Framework</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Leahy-Smith America Invents Act—Section 10</HD> The AIA was enacted on September 16, 2011. See Public Law 112-29, 125 Stat. 284, 316-17. Section 10(a) of the AIA authorizes the Director of the USPTO (Director) to set or adjust by rule any fee established, authorized, or charged under the Trademark Act for any services performed or materials furnished by the agency. Section 10 provides that trademark fees may be set or adjusted only to recover the aggregate estimated costs to the USPTO for processing, activities, services, and materials relating to trademarks, including administrative costs of the agency with respect to such trademark fees. Provided that the fees in the aggregate achieve overall aggregate cost recovery, the Director may set individual fees under section 10 at, below, or above their respective cost. Section 10(e) requires the Director to publish the final fee rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and the USPTO's Official Gazette at least 45 days before the final fees become effective. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. The Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success Act of 2018</HD> The SUCCESS Act was enacted on October 31, 2018. See Public Law 115-273, 132 Stat. 4158. Section 4 of the SUCCESS Act amended section 10(i)(2) of the AIA by striking “7-year” and inserting “15-year” in reference to the expiration of fee setting authority. Therefore, updated section 10(i) terminates the Director's authority to set or adjust any fee under section 10 upon the expiration of the 15-year period that began on September 16, 2011, and ends on September 16, 2026. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Trademark Public Advisory Committee Role</HD> The Secretary of Commerce established TPAC under the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999. TPAC advises the Director of the USPTO on the management, policies, goals, performance, budget, and user fees of trademark operations. When adopting fees under section 10 of the AIA, the Director must provide the proposed fees to TPAC at least 45 days prior to publishing the proposed fees in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . TPAC then has 30 days within which to deliberate, consider, and comment on the proposal, as well as hold a public hearing on the proposed fees. Then, TPAC must publish a written report setting forth in detail the comments, advice, and recommendations of the committee regarding the proposed fees. The USPTO must consider and analyze any comments, advice, or recommendations received from TPAC before setting or adjusting fees. Accordingly, on May 8, 2023, the Director notified TPAC of the USPTO's intent to set and adjust trademark fees and submitted a preliminary trademark fee proposal with supporting materials. The preliminary trademark fee proposal and associated materials are available on the fee setting section of the USPTO website at <E T="03">https://www.uspto.gov/FeeSettingAndAdjusting.</E> TPAC held a public hearing at the USPTO's headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 5, 2023, and membe ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 121k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━