A trademark registration can last forever, which is unusual among intellectual property rights. It can also disappear entirely because nobody diarised a date five years out.
The USPTO does not operate like a domain registrar sending increasingly urgent renewal reminders. The obligation to track maintenance deadlines sits with the registration owner, and missing them is one of the most common — and most avoidable — ways businesses lose brand protection they paid for.
The Section 8 Declaration: Years Five to Six
Your first maintenance obligation falls between the fifth and sixth anniversary of registration. A Section 8 Declaration of Continued Use confirms the mark is still being used in commerce and requires a current specimen for each class, along with a fee currently set at $325 per class.
A six-month grace period follows for an additional per-class surcharge. Beyond that, the registration is cancelled. Note that this is measured from the registration date, not from your original filing date — a distinction that catches out owners whose application took two years to register.
Section 9 Renewal: Every Ten Years
At the ten-year mark, and every ten years thereafter, you must file a Section 9 Application for Renewal. In practice it is filed together with another Section 8 Declaration, as the combined filing covering both requirements.
Each renewal requires a fresh specimen demonstrating current use for every class in the registration. A registration is not renewed automatically on payment — it is renewed on evidence that the mark is still in genuine commercial use. Fees are adjusted periodically, so verify current amounts on uspto.gov before filing.
Section 15: Optional but Valuable
After five consecutive years of continuous use following registration, you may file a Section 15 Declaration of Incontestability. It is optional and it is worth understanding.
Incontestable status limits the grounds on which your registration can later be challenged — notably, it forecloses attacks based on mere descriptiveness or on someone else's claim of prior use. For a mark that started life at the descriptive end of the spectrum, this is a meaningful hardening of your position. It is commonly filed alongside the Section 8 declaration, since the timing aligns.
Deadlines Worth Putting in Your Calendar Today
The pattern is straightforward once written down, and it deserves to live somewhere more reliable than institutional memory.
- Between year five and six from registration — Section 8 Declaration of Continued Use, plus optional Section 15
- Six-month grace period after that window — available with a surcharge, and the last chance
- Between year nine and ten — combined Section 8 and Section 9 renewal
- Every ten years thereafter — the same combined filing repeats
- Ongoing — keep the correspondence address current with the USPTO, or notices will go somewhere you do not read
What Happens If You Miss the Window
The registration is cancelled or expires. This is not a suspension you can reactivate by paying late — once the grace period closes, the registration is gone.
Limited relief exists by petition to the Director in genuinely extraordinary circumstances, filed within a tight window after the cancellation notice, but it is narrow and should never be treated as a fallback plan.
You would not lose your common-law rights in the mark, which survive as long as you keep using it. What you lose is the nationwide presumption of ownership, the ® symbol, and the enforcement advantages that made registration worth pursuing. Refiling means starting over with a new application, a new fee, and a priority date years later than the one you had.
Housekeeping That Prevents Problems
Two administrative habits prevent most maintenance failures. First, keep your correspondence address and email current with the USPTO, particularly after a move, a change of representative, or staff turnover. Notices sent to a dead mailbox are still validly sent.
Second, record ownership changes properly. If the business is sold, restructured, or the mark is assigned to a different entity, the assignment should be recorded so the register reflects the true owner. A maintenance filing made by an entity that no longer owns the mark creates problems that surface at the worst time.
Finally, keep specimens as you go. Collecting proof of current use every few years is easy if you archive packaging and website captures routinely, and awkward if you have to reconstruct it under deadline — one more reason ongoing trademark monitoring earns its keep well past the registration date.
