US Trademark Classes: All 45 Categories, Fees, and Filing Rules

U.S. trademark classes are the 45 numbered categories the USPTO uses to organize every product and service in its trademark database: Classes 1 through 34 cover goods, and Classes 35 through 45 cover services. When you file a trademark application, you choose the class or classes that match what you sell or do, and you pay $350 per class in base filing fees.¹ Your registration only protects you within the classes you register, so choosing correctly is one of the more consequential decisions in the whole application.

What the Class System Actually Does

The classification comes from the Nice Agreement, an international treaty that gave member countries a shared way to sort goods and services for trademark purposes. The current version in force at the USPTO is the Thirteenth Edition, version 2026, effective January 1, 2026.² Federal law gives the USPTO Director authority to set up the classification for administrative convenience, but expressly notes that the classification neither expands nor limits your rights.³

That last part matters more than it sounds. Your actual legal rights come from the specific goods or services you identify in your application and whether you use the mark in commerce for them. The class number is an organizing tool. Two businesses in the same class can coexist if their real products are unrelated, and two businesses in different classes can still conflict if their offerings overlap in practice.

Goods Classes 1 Through 34

The first 34 classes cover physical products.²

Class 1: Industrial chemicals, adhesives for industry, fertilizers
Class 2: Paints, varnishes, dyes, printing inks
Class 3: Cosmetics, toiletries, perfumes, cleaning preparations (non-medicated)
Class 4: Industrial oils, lubricants, fuels, candles
Class 5: Pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, baby food, disinfectants
Class 6: Common metals, metal building materials, safes
Class 7: Machines, motors, power tools, vending machines
Class 8: Hand tools, cutlery, razors
Class 9: Electronics, computers, downloadable software, scientific instruments
Class 10: Medical and surgical devices, prosthetics
Class 11: Lighting, heating, cooling, water treatment equipment
Class 12: Vehicles, engines for land vehicles
Class 13: Firearms, ammunition, explosives, fireworks
Class 14: Jewelry, watches, precious metals and stones
Class 15: Musical instruments and accessories
Class 16: Paper goods, printed materials, stationery, office supplies
Class 17: Rubber, insulation materials, semi-processed plastics
Class 18: Leather goods, luggage, bags, umbrellas
Class 19: Non-metal building materials, concrete, asphalt, stone
Class 20: Furniture, mirrors, picture frames, wood and plastic containers
Class 21: Household utensils, kitchenware, glassware, ceramics
Class 22: Ropes, nets, tents, awnings, raw textile fibers
Class 23: Yarns and threads for textile use
Class 24: Textiles, bed and table covers
Class 25: Clothing, footwear, headwear
Class 26: Buttons, zippers, pins, artificial flowers, hair accessories
Class 27: Carpets, rugs, mats, wallpaper
Class 28: Games, toys, sporting goods, holiday decorations
Class 29: Meat, fish, dairy, preserved foods, edible oils and fats
Class 30: Coffee, tea, rice, flour, bread, pastries, condiments, spices
Class 31: Fresh produce, live plants, seeds, animal feed
Class 32: Beers, non-alcoholic beverages, fruit drinks
Class 33: Alcoholic beverages (except beers)
Class 34: Tobacco products, smoking accessories, matches

A few placements catch people off guard. Downloadable software sits in Class 9, but the same software delivered as a cloud service belongs in Class 42. Beer is in Class 32, not with the other alcoholic drinks in Class 33. Cosmetics in Class 3 are specifically non-medicated; anything with a medical purpose moves to Class 5. The logic follows the Nice Classification rather than consumer intuition, which is why checking official descriptions before you file is worth the time.

Service Classes 35 Through 45

The remaining 11 classes cover services.²

Class 35: Advertising, business management, retail services, office functions
Class 36: Insurance, financial services, real estate, banking
Class 37: Construction, repair, installation services
Class 38: Telecommunications, broadcasting
Class 39: Transportation, packaging, storage, travel arrangement
Class 40: Treatment and processing of materials, printing, energy production
Class 41: Education, training, entertainment, sporting and cultural activities
Class 42: Scientific and technology services, software as a service, research
Class 43: Restaurant and food services, temporary accommodations
Class 44: Medical, veterinary, beauty, and agricultural services
Class 45: Legal services, security services, personal and social services

Class 35 is one of the most heavily filed service classes because it covers retail. If you sell other people’s products, whether that’s an online store or a brick-and-mortar shop carrying multiple brands, the retail activity itself is a Class 35 service, regardless of what class the underlying products fall into. A business that manufactures clothing and operates its own store needs Class 25 for the clothing and Class 35 for the retail services.

How to Pick the Right Class

Start by making a complete inventory of everything your brand does or plans to do. A coffee company that sells bags of beans (Class 30), runs a café (Class 43), and sells branded mugs (Class 21) needs all three classes. Every category you leave off is a category where your registration provides no protection.

Once you have your list, run each item through the USPTO’s Trademark ID Manual, a searchable database of thousands of pre-approved descriptions of goods and services.⁴ Each entry is already assigned to a class and comes with accepted wording. Search “bottled water” and the manual tells you Class 32 with ready-to-use language. Using pre-approved descriptions cuts the odds that an examining attorney will refuse your identification.

You cannot add classes to an application or registration after filing. If you realize later you missed one, you have to file a brand-new application and pay the full per-class fee again.⁵ That’s a strong argument for being thorough on the front end.

The Cost of Going Too Broad

Piling on classes you don’t actually need creates the opposite problem. A trademark registration requires ongoing use in commerce for the goods or services listed. If you claim coverage for products you never sell, a competitor can petition to cancel your registration for those items on the ground of abandonment. A partially or fully canceled registration is worse than a narrower one, because you lose the legal presumption of validity that came with the registration.

When Nothing in the ID Manual Fits

If your offering is unusual enough that no pre-approved description matches, you can write a custom identification. The examining attorney will review it and may request revisions. Custom descriptions and other formatting issues can trigger additional per-class surcharges of roughly $100 to $200 under the current fee structure.⁶

Why a Different Class Doesn’t Always Mean You’re Safe

A common misconception is that registering in one class protects you from anyone using a similar mark in a different class. It doesn’t work that way. The USPTO evaluates conflicts using a “likelihood of confusion” test that considers the relatedness of goods or services, and that analysis crosses class lines.⁷

Marks don’t need to be identical to conflict. They can be confusingly similar in sound, appearance, meaning, or overall commercial impression. The question is whether consumers would reasonably think the goods or services come from the same source, given how they’re used, sold, marketed, and typically bundled by real companies.

To make this manageable, the USPTO publishes lists of “coordinated classes,” pairings of classes whose goods or services routinely overlap in the marketplace.⁸ A Class 25 (clothing) application will trigger examiner searches in Class 18 (bags and leather goods) and Class 14 (jewelry), because fashion brands commonly sell across all three. A conflicting mark in a coordinated class can block you even though the numbers differ. Searching coordinated classes before filing is one of the best ways to catch a refusal risk early.

Specimen Rules Are Different for Goods and Services

Every use-based application requires a specimen showing the mark as consumers actually see it, and the requirements split along the goods/services line.⁹

For goods in Classes 1 through 34, the specimen must show the mark on the product itself or its packaging. Labels, tags, containers, and product pages on a working e-commerce site where the mark appears near the item all qualify. Advertising alone does not. A magazine ad showing your branded water bottle will be refused because it doesn’t connect the mark to the product at the point of sale.

For services in Classes 35 through 45, the rules invert. Because services can’t wear a label, advertising material is acceptable. Brochures, website screenshots describing the services with the mark shown, signage at the service location, and branded service vehicles all work. The common requirement is that the specimen shows the mark used in connection with the services as customers would encounter it.

Multi-class applications need a specimen for each class. One specimen can cover multiple classes if it legitimately shows the mark in use for all of them, but you’ll need to explain how in the filing.

Filing Fees Scale by Class

As of January 18, 2025, the USPTO retired the older TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard tiers and replaced them with a single base electronic filing fee of $350 per class through the Trademark Center portal.¹⁰ Paper applications run $850 per class.¹

Federal law requires that multi-class applications include a fee equal to the sum of each individual class fee.³ A three-class application costs $1,050 in base fees alone. That’s worth pausing over before you reflexively add every class that might one day apply.

Maintenance Fees Are Per Class Too

Registration isn’t a one-time cost. The USPTO requires periodic filings to keep a registration alive, and each one charges fees per class.¹¹

Between years 5 and 6: A Section 8 Declaration of Continued Use with a current specimen for each class. The fee is $325 per class.¹²
Between years 9 and 10: A combined Section 8 Declaration and Section 9 Renewal Application.
Every 10 years after that: Combined Section 8 and Section 9 filings again.

A three-class registration costs three times as much to maintain as a single-class one. If you’ve stopped using the mark for certain items, you need to delete those from the registration during maintenance filings. Claiming ongoing use for products you no longer sell exposes you to cancellation. Every class you register is a class you have to keep using, documenting, and paying for, which is one more reason to build your class list from what your business actually does rather than what it might someday try.

1
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Summary of 2025 Trademark Fee Changes
2
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Nice Agreement Current Edition Version – General Remarks, Class Headings and Explanatory Notes
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1112 – Classification of Goods and Services
4
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Searching the Trademark ID Manual
5
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Base Application Requirements
6
eCFR. 37 CFR 2.6 – Trademark Fees
7
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Likelihood of Confusion
8
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Using Coordinated Classes in Your Federal Trademark Search
9
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Specimens
10
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Trademark Center – A New Way to Apply to Register Your Trademark
11
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Keeping Your Registration Alive
12
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Trademark Fee Information