There’s a persistent myth that once your trademark registers, you’re done. Certificate on the wall, brand protected, case closed. Not quite. A federal trademark registration can last forever, but only if you maintain it. Miss a deadline, and the USPTO cancels your registration, no matter how long you’ve used the mark or how much you’ve built on it.
Here are the dates that matter.
The maintenance calendar
- Years 5 to 6: the Section 8 Declaration. Between the fifth and sixth anniversary of your registration, you must file a declaration confirming the mark is still in use in commerce, along with a specimen proving it. Skip this filing and your registration is cancelled. The USPTO doesn’t send you a bill or a reminder letter (recently, they have started sending an email). Tracking the deadline is on you.
- Years 9 to 10: the combined Section 8 and 9 filing. Before your tenth anniversary, you file again: another declaration of use plus a renewal application. Do this and your registration continues for another ten years.
- Every 10 years after that. Same combined filing, every decade, for as long as you use the mark. This is how trademarks like Coca-Cola stay registered for over a century.
There’s a six-month grace period after each deadline if you pay an extra fee. After that, the registration is gone, and your only path back is starting over with a brand-new application, behind everyone who filed in the meantime.
Year 5 bonus: incontestability
The five-year mark also brings good news. After five years of continuous use, you can file a Section 15 declaration to make your registration “incontestable.” That’s a serious upgrade. An incontestable registration can no longer be challenged on the grounds that your mark is merely descriptive or that someone else used it first in a particular region. It’s optional, it’s inexpensive relative to what it gives you, and many owners don’t even know it exists. If you’re filing your Section 8 anyway, it usually makes sense to file the Section 15 with it.
Watch out for the fake renewal notices
Here’s the part that makes me genuinely angry on behalf of clients. Because trademark registrations are public records, scam operations harvest owner information and mail official-looking “renewal notices” with names like “Patent and Trademark Bureau” or “Trademark Compliance Office.” They demand fees for registrations that aren’t due for years, or for useless “private registry” listings. Some are designed to look exactly like government correspondence.
The rule is simple: the USPTO communicates about your registration through your attorney of record, and real correspondence comes from uspto.gov. If a letter demands money and you didn’t expect it, don’t pay it. Forward it to your attorney first.
One number to remember
If you take one thing from this post, it’s the year-5-to-6 window. That first Section 8 deadline catches more registrants off guard than any other, precisely because it arrives when the registration feels like old news.
If you’d like help tracking your maintenance deadlines or making your registration incontestable, call my office at (888) 666-0062 or schedule an Initial Discovery & Strategy Session. Disclaimer
