The letter arrives eighteen months after the launch party, on letterhead, in the tone lawyers reserve for people who are about to have a worse month: another company has used a similar name longer, holds the registered trademark, and would like you to stop — rebranding the signs, the packaging, the domain, the reviews you earned under that name, everything. Almost every element of that disaster was preventable for a few hundred dollars at the start. This is the trademark process as a timeline: what a business name registration actually is, what each stage costs, and how long the whole road takes.
First, separate three things that all sound like “registering a name”
Registering your business entity with the state (the LLC or corporation) gives you the right to exist under that name in that state — and no trademark rights at all. A DBA (“doing business as”) filing registers a trade name with your county or state for business operation — still no trademark rights. A federal trademark, granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office, is the only item on the list that gives you nationwide rights to the name in your category and the power behind that cease-and-desist letter. Owners routinely buy the first two believing they have bought the third. The stages below are the third.
Stage one (days 1–3): the search, $0 to $500
Before filing anything, find out whether the name is already taken in your space. Search the USPTO’s database yourself for free, then widen it: Google, social handles, domains, your state registry, competitors in adjacent categories. The dangerous conflicts are not only identical names — trademark law cares about likelihood of confusion, so a similar name in a related field can block or endanger you even with different spelling. Many owners pay a trademark attorney $300 to $500 to run and interpret a proper clearance search at this stage. Given that everything later in this timeline costs more than that, it is the cheapest insurance in the entire process.
Stage two (week 1): the application, $250 to $350 per class
Filing is done through the USPTO’s TEAS system, and the fee is $250 to $350 per class of goods or services — the USPTO fee schedule lists the current amounts. “Class” is the trap for the unwary: a business selling clothing and running a café needs two classes and pays twice; most single-line businesses need one. You file either as already using the name in commerce (with a specimen — a photo of the product, a screenshot of the sales page — proving real use) or as intent-to-use, which reserves the name while you launch, with a later statement-of-use fee (currently $150 per class) when sales begin. The application itself takes an experienced filer under an hour; take longer. Errors in the description of goods are the most common self-inflicted wound, and specimens run a close second: the USPTO rejects mockups, digitally altered images and, for goods, advertising pages that never show the mark on the product itself. A real photo of the real item, bearing the mark the way customers see it, is what the stage demands — collect it before you sit down to file.
Stage three (months 1–6): examination, $0 unless it snags
Your application waits in a queue — expect the first action from an examining attorney around five to six months after filing in recent conditions. The examiner checks conflicts and technical compliance. Two outcomes: smooth passage to publication, or an Office Action — an official objection you must answer within the deadline. Minor issues (a disclaimer, a wording fix) are DIY-able; a likelihood-of-confusion refusal is attorney territory, and responses typically cost $500 to $1,500 in legal fees if you hire one. Budget psychologically for this stage even if you never pay it: most applications that fail, fail here, on conflicts a good stage-one search would have caught.
Stage four (months 6–9): publication and the opposition window
Approved applications are published in the Official Gazette, and for 30 days anyone who believes your mark harms theirs may file an opposition. Most marks pass unopposed — oppositions are rare and expensive for the opposer too — but the window is real, and it is the last public checkpoint. If nobody objects, an in-use application proceeds to registration; an intent-to-use application receives a Notice of Allowance and waits for your statement of use once the name is genuinely selling.
Stage five (months 8–12): registration — and the real total
The certificate arrives roughly 8 to 12 months after filing for a smooth application. Add it up DIY: about $250 to $350 in USPTO fees for a one-class, already-in-use filing, plus your time. Add the attorney route — the path most businesses with real investment in a name should take — and the typical total is $1,000 to $2,500 covering search, filing and shepherding. After registration, maintenance filings fall due between the fifth and sixth year and every ten years after, each with its own fee, and the ® symbol becomes yours to use. Miss a maintenance deadline by enough and the registration dies — calendar them the day the certificate arrives.
The halfway option: a state trademark
Most states will register a trademark for a modest fee — typically under $100 — with a far shorter process than the federal route. Its protection stops at the state line, which sounds like a flaw and sometimes is the whole point: a business that will only ever trade locally (the bakery, the salon, the regional service) may find state registration plus genuine local use entirely sufficient, at a tenth of the federal cost and a fraction of the time. The moment the plans include selling online across states, franchising, or building a brand meant to be worth something to a buyer, the federal timeline above is the right road. Choose based on the business you are actually building, and remember the two registrations are not rivals — many growing brands hold the state filing early and the federal one as they expand.
What a trademark does not do — three limits worth knowing
First, it protects your category, not the universe. Unrelated industries can share a name without conflict — airlines and faucet makers have coexisted under “Delta” for decades — which is why the same name can be legitimately available to your bakery even though a famous software company uses it. Second, it does not erase earlier users. Someone who provably used a similar mark in commerce before you, in their region, keeps rights there even after you register; the stage-one search exists partly to find these people while finding them is still free. Third, it does not enforce itself. Registration gives you the standing and the presumption of ownership — but watching for infringers and acting on them remains your job, which is why the letter in this article’s opening goes out from the owner who registered, not from the government.
Doing it yourself versus hiring the attorney
The DIY path is defensible when the name is distinctive and invented (a coined word, not a description), your stage-one search finds nothing close in related fields, and you sell one line of goods in one class. The attorney path earns its fee when the name is descriptive or surname-based, when the search turns up near-neighbors you must judge, when you will file in several classes, or when the brand is the business — the name on a product line you intend to sell nationally or one day sell outright. A useful middle road exists: pay for the attorney’s clearance search and opinion only ($300 to $500), then file the clean application yourself. And one rule regardless of path: anyone may mark a name with ™ the moment they claim it in commerce — it costs nothing and asserts the claim. The ® symbol, by contrast, is reserved for after federal registration; using it early is itself a legal error.
Before the timeline starts: is the name even available?
Every stage above assumes a name that can survive stage one. If you are still choosing, do the availability work first — clearance searching, confusion checking, domain and handle screening — because renaming before launch costs an afternoon and renaming after it costs the business’s accumulated identity. The full pre-check method is laid out in how to choose a business name that’s not already taken, and it feeds directly into stage one when you are ready to file.
The timeline on one line
Search this week (free to $500), file this month ($250–$350 per class), examination by about month six, registration in months 8 to 12, maintenance at years five to six and every ten. Total realistic cost: a few hundred dollars doing it yourself, $1,000 to $2,500 with an attorney — against the alternative, which is one letter, eighteen months in, pricing your name at everything you built on it. Start the search before you print anything you would hate to reprint.
