UK trade marks: £205 a class, three months, and two months to oppose

The name over a café, the logo on a van, the name of a workshop — none of it is protected because you thought of it first. It is protected because it is registered. In the UK that is done by the Intellectual Property Office, the application goes in online, and an untroubled one is through in about three months. The price starts at £205 and rises with the number of classes of goods and services you claim.

What does a UK trade mark application cost?

A standard online application on form TM3 costs £205 for one class, plus £60 for each additional class. The same application on paper costs £250. GOV.UK puts it as registration costing "at least £205", with the total rising depending on how many types of goods or services you want covered. The fees in force are the April 2026 revision.

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Classes are the headings all goods and services are sorted into. A coffee shop that serves coffee and also sells bags of beans almost certainly falls into more than one, and every extra class is another £60.

How is Right Start different from a standard application?

Right Start lets you hear the examiner's view first and decide about the rest of the money afterwards. The first part costs £125 for one class plus £30 for each additional class. The IPO examines the application and issues its opinion. To carry on, challenge the decision or discuss the detail, you pay a further £125 plus £30 per additional class.

The arithmetic does not favour Right Start if you are confident: one class comes to £250 against £205 by the standard route. The point of it is the option to stop after the first payment if examination says the mark will not get through.

How long does it take, step by step?

The IPO examines the application within two weeks. If there are no objections, the mark is published in the trade marks journal — and that starts a two-month window in which anyone else can oppose it. If nobody does, the mark is registered two weeks after publication, which is roughly three months after you applied. GOV.UK's overview gives a range of three to four months from application to grant, allowing for questions along the way.

Opposition is a procedure with a price of its own. Filing one on form TM7 costs £125 where the grounds are limited to sections 5(1) and 5(2), and £250 where other grounds are raised, alone or alongside those.

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How long does registration last, and what does renewal cost?

A trade mark lasts ten years, and it must be renewed every ten years to stay in force. Renewal on form TM11 costs £245 for one class — the same online or on paper — plus £60 for each extra class.

So a mark covering three classes costs £325 to file (£205 plus two lots of £60) and £365 at every renewal (£245 plus two lots of £60). That is the real cost of ownership, and it is worth working out before the logo goes onto the shopfront and the packaging.

What is worth doing before you pay?

Check the name is not taken. That is where applications come unstuck and later draw an opposition from the owner of a similar mark. The IPO publishes applications in the journal precisely so those owners can react, and the two-month window belongs to them, not to you. Second, choose the classes carefully: a class cannot be added after filing, so it has to be claimed separately and paid for again.

It is also worth remembering that a UK registration works in the UK. A mark registered at the IPO does not protect the name in the EU or anywhere else — other markets need their own applications.