Purely Elizabeth started as one woman’s granola recipe and a business name Elizabeth Stein picked before she had any reason to think it would ever be worth protecting. By the time Ferrero paid roughly $850 million for the company, that name — not just the recipe — was a meaningful part of what Ferrero was buying. Nobody files a trademark application thinking that far ahead. That’s exactly why it’s worth doing before there’s anything valuable enough to fight over.
Most first-time founders assume they’ve already handled this. They formed an LLC, the state approved the name, they bought the matching domain — surely that means the name is theirs. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office says otherwise, directly and in its own words.
An LLC, a domain, and a trademark protect three different things
On its trademark-process page, the USPTO is blunt that forming a business under a name doesn’t automatically create trademark rights in it: “using a business name doesn’t necessarily qualify as trademark use, but using it as the source of goods or services might qualify it as both a business name and a trademark.” The distinction matters because it means the state never actually checked whether your name is safe to use — it only checked whether another business entity in that state already has the identical name on file, which is a far shallower search than the USPTO’s own trademark register.
A domain name is even less protective. The USPTO states it plainly: “Registering a domain name with a domain name registrar doesn’t give you any trademark rights,” and warns that “you could later be required to surrender” a domain “if it infringes on someone else’s trademark rights.” A GoDaddy or Squarespace checkout confirming a domain is available says nothing about whether the name is already someone else’s federally registered mark.
None of that means you’ve done anything wrong by forming an LLC and buying a domain first — most founders do, and both are genuinely necessary steps. It means neither one is the step that actually secures the name.
What changed in January 2025 — and what it costs now
For years, the choice was between TEAS Plus ($250 per class, more restrictive requirements) and TEAS Standard ($350 per class, more flexible). The USPTO retired that structure. Per the USPTO’s own fee schedule, effective January 19, 2025, there is now a single base electronic filing fee: $350 per class of goods or services, filed through the Trademark Center that replaced the legacy TEAS system.
On top of that base fee, two surcharges apply per class, and both are avoidable:
- $100 if your application is missing required information (for applications filed under Trademark Act Sections 1 and 44).
- $200 if you describe what you sell in a free-form text box instead of selecting pre-approved language from the USPTO’s own Trademark ID Manual — plus another $200 for every additional 1,000 characters used that way beyond the first 1,000.
A single-class application that trips both of those isn’t a $350 filing anymore — it’s $650 or more, before you’ve paid anyone to help you file it.
The easiest way to avoid both surcharges
The ID Manual surcharge catches founders who, understandably, want their description to sound like their actual business rather than a generic government category. The fix costs nothing: search the USPTO’s Trademark ID Manual for pre-approved wording that covers what you sell, and use that instead of writing your own. It’s less personal than describing your business in your own words, but it’s free, and the USPTO already accepts it without additional review — which is the entire reason it exists as an option.
The same logic that makes a founders’ agreement worth writing before the business has anything worth fighting over applies here: the paperwork is more tedious to get right before you’ve built anything, and far more expensive to get right after.
How long it actually takes
The USPTO’s own published targets: a first office action — the examining attorney’s initial review, where most objections surface — within roughly 4.5 to 5 months of filing. Average total pendency, from filing to either registration or abandonment, is targeted at about 11 months, rising to roughly 14 months on average for applications that get suspended somewhere along the way (commonly because of a conflicting pending application or a required consent).
A clean application, using ID Manual language and a mark that clears a search with no close conflicts, tends to move through closer to that faster end. One that draws an office action, or an opposition during the mandatory public-comment period before registration, can run considerably longer. Either way, the timeline argument for filing early is the same as the cost argument: nothing about the process gets faster or cheaper by waiting until the name is already doing real work for the business.
File it while the name is still cheap to protect
The moment a name starts appearing on packaging, a storefront, or a growing customer base, it also starts accumulating the kind of value that makes a later dispute expensive — in legal fees, in rebranding costs, or in a competitor with a similar name getting there first. Filing before any of that happens isn’t about assuming the business will be the next Purely Elizabeth. It’s that the paperwork costs the same $350 per class whether you file it in month one or year five, and the downside of skipping it only gets larger with time, not smaller.
Frequently asked questions
If I formed an LLC and bought the matching domain, do I already own the name?
No. The USPTO states directly that using a business name “doesn’t necessarily qualify as trademark use” on its own, and that registering a domain name “doesn’t give you any trademark rights” — in fact, a domain can later be required to be surrendered if it infringes someone else’s registered trademark. State LLC filings and domain registrars check different, much shallower databases than the USPTO’s own trademark register, so a state approving your LLC name is not a signal that the name is available to trademark, or that you’re not already infringing someone else’s mark by using it.
How much does it cost to trademark a business name now?
As of the USPTO’s fee schedule effective January 19, 2025, the base electronic filing fee is $350 per class of goods or services — one flat fee, replacing the old $250/$350 TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard tiers. Surcharges can add to that: $100 per class if the application is missing required information, and $200 per class if you describe your goods or services in free-form text instead of selecting pre-approved language from the USPTO’s ID Manual, plus $200 more per additional 1,000 characters used in that free-form box beyond the first 1,000.
How do I avoid the free-form description surcharge?
Use the USPTO’s Trademark ID Manual to describe what you sell, rather than writing your own description. The ID Manual is a searchable list of pre-approved goods-and-services descriptions the USPTO already accepts without extra review — picking from it, even if the exact wording feels generic compared to how you’d describe your business, avoids the $200-per-class free-form surcharge and the additional $200 per extra 1,000 characters entirely.
How long does trademark registration actually take?
The USPTO’s own published targets are a first office action (the examiner’s initial review) within about 4.5 to 5 months of filing, and average total pendency — filing to registration or abandonment — of roughly 11 months, rising to about 14 months on average for applications that get suspended along the way. A clean application with no examiner objections and no opposition during the publication period moves faster than one that hits either.