Trademark and IP-related news for the legal professionals

Filing a trademark application through the WIPO Madrid System is often seen as the simple way to protect a brand across dozens of countries at once. The main issue, however, lies in what happens after filing: each country's IP office still runs its own examination, and a large share of applications end up receiving an office action (OA). To find out how real that risk actually is, we reviewed a full quarter of WIPO applications and tracked every office action issued against them.

Every trademark application a company files abroad is a bet on a market it hasn't fully entered yet. Look at where American businesses are placing that bet, and you get something more useful than a trend report: an early warning system for where competition, risk, and opportunity are actually building. The patterns are not what most business owners assume.

Entering the American market is a milestone for any European business, and one of the first legal questions that comes with it is what it will actually cost to protect your brand there. The honest answer is that US trademark protection is neither a one-off purchase nor a single line item. This guide breaks down the real numbers as they stand in 2026, with the quirks that matter specifically to European applicants.

Every business that expands into the US carries assumptions from its home market. Some of those assumptions turn out to be wrong, and trademark law is often where that shows up first. Some of these mistaktes recur because the US trademark system works differently from what most businesses are used to at home, and businesses naturally carry their home-market habits with them when they expand into a new one.

All US trademarks are built on use in commerce. To prove it, applicants must submit a specimen showing the mark in use and sign a declaration under oath confirming that the use is genuine. This is often treated as a formality because USPTO examiners do not verify the declared use. Instead, they rely on the sworn declaration. This is where the distinction between bona fide use and token use comes in place, and here’s what you need to know:

When applicants receive a likelihood of confusion refusal, they disregard it because their brand name doesn’t look or sound identical to the cited mark. The reaction makes sense, but it also comes from a misunderstanding of how the USPTO evaluates likelihood of confusion. The analysis doesn’t just look at formal/phonetic similarities, but rather asks whether consumers encountering both brands in the marketplace are likely to be confused about the source. If it seems like an arbitrary difference, let us explain.

A data-driven look at where 172,000 annual trademark filings land, and what it means for your brand.

What over 500,000 annual trademark filings reveal about your real odds before you spend a dollar on registration.

When applicants file a trademark application with the USPTO, they are required to identify the goods and services their mark will cover. That identification defines the scope of protection the trademark will provide, and as of 2025, it also directly determines what the applicant pays. A new fee structure introduced by the USPTO imposes financial surcharges on applicants who use free-form, custom-written descriptions rather than pre-approved language from the USPTO's ID Manual. Understanding how these fees work, and how to structure an application to minimize them, is now a necessary part of preparing any trademark filing.

Getting a trademark registered in 2026 is harder than ever before, and the trend is not likely to reverse because it’s structural rather than procedural. Here’s what you need to know about registering trademarks with the USPTO, along with what you can do to maximize your chances of success.