US Trademark Lifecycle: How to Keep Your Brand Registered

Five years ago you registered your brand. The USPTO now wants a short check-in. Between the fifth and sixth anniversary of your registration, you file a Section 8 declaration. That is your signed statement that you still use the trademark. After that, you renew every ten years. Each deadline has a six-month grace period, at $100 more per class for a Section 8 declaration and $200 more per class for a renewal. Miss that too, and the USPTO cancels the registration. Section 15 is optional. After five years of steady use, it can make your registration incontestable. That is a status that makes it much harder to attack in court.

Information current as of 27 September 2026. Country covered: United States (USPTO). We checked the rules on 27 September 2026 against the United States Trademark Act, the USPTO's rules, and its May 2026 examination manual. USPTO fees are those in effect since 18 January 2025.

Updated 27 September 2026: this guide now maps the whole life of a United States trademark and explains incontestability in full. It also corrects what we said about the grace-period fee, USPTO reminders, and a missed Section 15.

What does the life of a United States trademark look like?

Most of the work comes after registration. The last column links our guide to each stage.

Two habits last the whole way. Use the ® symbol only after registration, and only for the goods and services it covers. Before that, use ™ (or ℠ for services). A state or foreign registration does not allow the ®. Using it on purpose to mislead can count as fraud. And watch the market yourself. The USPTO registers trademarks but does not enforce them. Stopping a copycat is the owner's job.

When are your deadlines?

Every date counts from the registration date on your certificate, not the date you applied.

Say your registration date is 15 March 2021:

• Section 8 window: 15 March 2026 to 15 March 2027, at $325 per class. It is open now.
• Grace period: 16 March 2027 to 15 September 2027, at $425 per class ($325 plus $100).
• Renewal window: 15 March 2030 to 15 March 2031, at $650 per class, with grace to 15 September 2031.

If your registration date is between 2 October 2020 and 2 October 2021, your first Section 8 window is open as of 2 October 2026. The USPTO's online system will not take a declaration before the window opens. Filing dates follow Eastern Time.

The USPTO emails a courtesy reminder to the address on your record. The deadline runs whether or not it arrives, so keep that address current. Real USPTO email comes only from addresses ending in @uspto.gov. Our free USPTO check, linked below, finds your window from your serial number and can email you when it opens.

Our United States trademark renewal service handles the year-10 filing.

What goes into a Section 8 declaration?

You sign it inside the filing window. It says the trademark is in use in business in the United States for everything you keep. Six things go in:

• The registration number. It is on your certificate and in TSDR, the USPTO's free status database.
• The owner's name, exactly as the USPTO records it. Only the current owner can file. If the trademark was sold or moved to a new company, record the transfer first. Our trademark assignment guide explains how.
• The goods and services you still sell, class by class, and the ones to delete.
• One current specimen per class. A specimen is your proof of use. It can be a photo of the product or label showing the trademark. It can also be a web page with its URL and date. It has to show use during the window, so your old application image works only if still in use. Mockups and edited images fail. Our specimen guide and our guide to specimen refusals show what passes.
• An attorney licensed in the United States, if the owner is based outside the country. This applies to every filing after registration. The attorney who filed your application leaves the record once it registers, unless you appoint them again.
• The USPTO fee: $325 per class, plus $250 per class if you add Section 15.

Registrations on the Supplemental Register, the USPTO's second register, need a Section 8 declaration too. Our comparison of the Principal and Supplemental Registers explains the difference.

Why trim your goods list before you file?

Keep only the goods and services you sell under the trademark. Delete the rest before you file. A deletion before the declaration costs no USPTO fee. A deletion after filing costs $250 per class. Deleted items never come back, and a registration cannot add new goods. A new product line needs a new application. A registration is a record of what you sell, not a wish list.

There is a second reason. The USPTO audits some Section 8 and Section 71 declarations. A random audit can pick a registration with four or more items in one class. It can also pick one with two or more items in each of at least two classes. The owner then proves use for two more items per audited class. Anything not proved is deleted, at $250 per class. The USPTO reports that audits have canceled or removed goods or services in more than half of the registrations it audited. It also runs directed audits when a specimen looks digitally altered.

Can someone else remove goods you do not use?

Yes. Since the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020, anyone can ask the USPTO to cancel listed goods the owner does not use. The USPTO fee is $400 per class.

• Expungement is for goods never used in business in the United States. It can be filed between three and ten years after registration.
• Reexamination is for goods not in use on the date the law required. That is the filing date for a use-based application, or the Statement of Use deadline for an intent-to-use one. It can be filed within five years of registration.

The owner gets three months to answer with proof of use. One more month costs $125 in USPTO fees. Goods left without an answer are canceled.

Nonuse matters outside these routes too. Under United States law, three years in a row without use is presumed abandonment, whatever the paperwork says.

What if you have paused using the trademark?

A Section 8 declaration can claim excusable nonuse instead of use, for some goods or all of them. That means a good reason, beyond your control, for not using the trademark right now. The claim needs facts: when use stopped, why, and when use will restart. With a plan to resume, these can qualify: a trade embargo, a fire that shut the only factory, or a sole owner's serious illness. A business decision to pause, falling demand, or use only outside the United States does not. If the USPTO rejects the claim, you lose those goods when the window ends. Have an experienced attorney review it first.

What does incontestable mean?

Section 15 lets you declare two things. The trademark has been in continuous use for five years in a row since registration. And it is still in use. Once you file it and meet its conditions, your right to use the trademark for the listed goods becomes "incontestable". The USPTO does not examine or approve the claim. It simply acknowledges the filing. What changes is how much your registration proves in court.

What Changes in Court

Conclusive proof covers only the goods and services named in your Section 15 declaration, or fewer if a later renewal lists fewer. So list only goods with a full five years of use.

What It Cannot Protect Against

Incontestable is not the same as untouchable. A registration can still be canceled at any time if the trademark:

• is generic, meaning it is, or has become, the everyday name for the product;
• is functional, meaning the feature is useful rather than a sign of who made it;
• has been abandoned (three years without use is presumed abandonment);
• was registered by fraud, or is used to mislead buyers about where the goods come from;
• falls under the law's other permanent bars, such as deceptive matter, government flags and emblems, or a living person's name used without consent;
• was never used on some of the goods (expungement, from year 3 to year 10).

In an infringement case, the other side can still use the defenses the law lists. Examples are fraud, abandonment, misleading buyers about the source, and fair use of their own name or plain descriptive words. Their own earlier use or registration also counts, but only in the area where they used it first. So do three more: using the trademark to break antitrust law, functionality, and delay. Delay means waiting too long to act, or seeming to accept the use. You still have to prove the infringement itself.

Who Can File, and When

• Principal Register only. A Supplemental Register registration cannot become incontestable.
• Five years in a row of continuous use after the registration date, on each listed item, and still in use today.
• No final decision against your ownership or your right to keep the registration.
• No pending case about those rights at the USPTO or in court.
• Signed and filed within one year after the five-year period, by the current owner.
• USPTO fee: $250 per class. There is no grace period for Section 15.

A registration that came through WIPO's Madrid System can use Section 15 too.

How It Fits With Section 8 and Renewal

Section 15 does not replace upkeep. Miss a Section 8 declaration or renewal, and an incontestable registration is still canceled. The usual timing is to file both together, in one filing, between years 5 and 6. Only the Section 8 part carries a grace-period fee. Section 15 can also go in with a Section 71 declaration, with the 10-year renewal, or on its own.

If you missed it at year 5, nothing is lost. Any five-year run of continuous use counts. You can file within a year after your latest run ends.

Is it worth filing?

• File it if three things are true. The trademark is on the Principal Register. It has five unbroken years of use on the goods you care about. And no dispute is pending. For a brand you may enforce one day, stronger proof in court for $250 per class in USPTO fees is usually worth it.
• Wait if a cancellation, opposition, or lawsuit about the trademark is pending. Wait too if use on some goods stopped in the last five years.
• Not available for Supplemental Register registrations or for a generic term.
• Cost with GTC: with your Section 8 or renewal, Section 15 adds $100 to our Professional Fees. On its own it is $150, plus the USPTO fee and Bank Fee (see the price table below).

Registered through WIPO's Madrid System? You have two calendars

A United States registration that came from an international registration through WIPO has a serial number starting with 79. You keep it alive with a Section 71 declaration, not Section 8. The pattern is the same: between the fifth and sixth anniversary, then in the year before every tenth. The dates count from the day the USPTO registered it. The USPTO fees match Section 8: $325 per class, and $100 per class more in the grace period.

Renewal is separate. You renew at WIPO, every ten years from the international registration date. The two dates rarely line up. Our guide to Section 71 and WIPO renewals and our Section 71 declaration service cover this route.

What happens if you miss a deadline?

• Filed on time, with a mistake, such as a weak specimen, a missing class fee, or the wrong owner's name. Fix it before the window closes, with no USPTO fee. After that, the fix costs a $100 deficiency fee, and a new specimen has to show use from within the window. If the USPTO raises the problem, you reply within six months or by the window's end, whichever is later.
• Filed in the grace period: the full fee plus $100 per class for a Section 8 or Section 71 declaration, or plus $200 per class for a renewal (Sections 8 and 9).
• Not filed by the end of the grace period: the USPTO cancels the registration. There is no petition to revive it, and no late fee reopens it.
• Starting again: a new application gets a new filing date. It has to cover the identical trademark and the same or fewer goods. On request, the USPTO then moves it ahead of the queue, with no petition fee. Your rights from using the trademark in business do not end with the registration.

What does it cost with GTC?

These are our prices, checked against our live catalog on 27 September 2026. The Government Fees are the USPTO's fees, passed on at cost.

Our Professional Fees are flat for any number of classes. Each extra class adds its USPTO fee plus a 5% Bank Fee. Two classes come to $832.50 for Section 8, $1,457.50 for Sections 8 and 15, and $1,545.00 for a renewal. Section 15 on its own is $412.50 for one class. A renewal with Section 15 is $1,225.00. Section 71 costs the same as Section 8, and Sections 71 and 15 the same as Sections 8 and 15. The grace period adds the USPTO's $100 per class and a $5.00 Bank Fee for a Section 8 or Section 71 declaration, and $200 per class and a $10.00 Bank Fee for a renewal.

Simple USPTO questions after filing are included. A reply to a post-registration audit or another substantive USPTO objection is quoted from $200. USPTO fees come on top, such as $250 per class to delete goods. If you are comparing quotes, ask for the same three lines.

What to Do This Week

When did you last read the goods list on your registration? Three steps cover the rest:

• Find the registration date on your certificate or in TSDR, and work out your window.
• Go through the goods class by class. Note what you still sell and what to delete first.
• Check for five unbroken years of use and no pending dispute. If both are true, add Section 15 to the same filing.

See your window and price in a minute. Enter your serial number in the free USPTO check on our United States trademark maintenance page. It can also email you when your window opens. Our experienced attorney files with the USPTO and stays on your record.