Do Trademarks Expire? How a Registration Dies, and What It Costs

In 2025 the USPTO canceled 143,150 U.S. trademark registrations because their owners did not file an acceptable declaration of use, the sworn statement that a mark is still in use, at the six-year mark. Almost all of them, about 98.5%, had no such filing on record at all. Of the 253,967 registrations issued in 2018 (not counting registrations that came through the international Madrid system), 53.4% were canceled at that first deadline. For owners based in the United States, the figure was 51.4%.

So the short answer is no, a trademark registration does not expire on a fixed date the way a patent does. It can last as long as you use the mark and keep filing. But it dies automatically when a filing is missed, and the most common moment for that is year six.

How we counted: GleanMark analysis of public USPTO records. The 2025 figure counts registrations whose "Cancelled Sec. 8 (6-yr)" event is dated in calendar 2025. The 2018 figures count registrations issued in calendar 2018 whose serial numbers do not start with 79 (the Madrid prefix).

The schedule

A registration lasts ten years, but federal law cancels it early unless the owner files sworn statements that the mark is still in use (15 U.S.C. § 1058). The deadlines run from the registration date:

Each deadline has a six-month grace period at the higher fee. After that, the registration is gone. The USPTO says it "has no authority to waive or extend the deadline," and registrations canceled this way "cannot be reinstated or "revived."" The USPTO emails a courtesy reminder, but it adds that "even if you don't receive a reminder, you must still file these documents on time." A federal appeals court made the same point in 1995, when Checkers Drive-In Restaurants lost a registration over a missed affidavit: "Congress made no exception for the innocent or the negligent." Our guide to Section 8 and 9 deadlines walks through each filing step by step.

The five ways a registration ends

1. Nobody files at year six

This is the big one: 143,150 registrations in 2025. The cost of preventing it is $325 per class. The cost of missing it is starting over with a new application at $350 per class or more, with a new filing date. Losing the registration does not erase the rights you earned by actually using the mark, but the nationwide priority a registration provides starts over from the new application's filing date (15 U.S.C. § 1057(c)).

2. Nobody renews at year ten

Another 47,004 registrations were canceled in 2025 at the ten-year renewal or a later one, and only about 6.5% of them had filed anything. A registration that has been maintained for decades still dies at the next deadline if nobody files.

3. The filing is made, but it fails

A declaration filed on time, including in the grace period, that turns out to be defective can be fixed after the deadline for a $100 surcharge. Filing is not the same as being accepted: in 2025, 728 registrations were canceled at the ten-year mark for lacking an acceptable Section 8 declaration, and 714 of them had filed one. Another risk is an audit. Since November 2017 the USPTO has run a post-registration audit program that asks some owners to prove use for additional goods or services. If you cannot, "you must pay a $250 deletion fee per class each time goods or services are removed, and possibly a $100 deficiency surcharge, or your entire registration will be canceled." The USPTO says audits have led to removing goods or services, or canceling the registration, "in more than fifty percent of audited registrations." Deleting goods you no longer sell costs nothing if you do it before you file the declaration.

4. Someone shows you are not using it

Federal law treats three consecutive years of nonuse as "prima facie evidence of abandonment" (15 U.S.C. § 1127). Since the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020, anyone can ask the USPTO to strip goods or services you never used (expungement, between 3 and 10 years after registration) or were not using when you had to show use (reexamination, in the first 5 years). Each costs the challenger $400 per class, and a challenger can usually stay anonymous. A cancellation case at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board costs $600 per class. The USPTO also starts these proceedings itself: by May 2025 it had canceled more than 50,000 goods and services this way, most of them from proceedings it started against registrations linked to what it calls "specimen farms."

5. Your brand becomes the everyday word

If most buyers come to understand a brand as the common name for the product, the owner can lose the right to stop others from using the word, and a registration for a generic name can be canceled "at any time"; incontestable status is no defense. The test is what buyers understand the word to mean. In 1921 a court let a competitor sell "aspirin" to the public under that name. In 1936 a court let a competitor use "cellophane," finding it was "the descriptive word in general use." In 1963 a court held that "the major significance of the word "thermos" is generic," even though its owner had worked to police it; the registrations stayed valid, but competitors could use the word with limits. Some generic use is not enough: in 2017 a federal appeals court held that people using "google" as a verb did not make GOOGLE generic.

Big companies let registrations lapse too

Two real 2025 cancellations from the public record:

• OCULUS, Meta Platforms, Inc. (serial 86982976, Reg. No. 5,561,528). Registered September 11, 2018, for social networking services. The USPTO emailed a six-year reminder on September 11, 2023. No declaration was filed, and the registration was canceled on March 21, 2025. Meta still holds a live multi-class OCULUS registration (Reg. No. 6,364,707) that also covers social networking services.
• XBOX LIVE, Microsoft Corporation (serial 78168878, Reg. No. 2,902,268). Registered November 9, 2004, for online multiplayer game services. Its six-year declaration was accepted in 2010 and the registration was renewed in 2014. It was canceled on May 23, 2025, at the next renewal.

Neither tells you why the registration lapsed, and neither is evidence of a mistake. The point is how mechanical the process is: the same automatic cancellation applies to a startup whose one registration is the whole brand.

How to keep yours alive

1. Put the dates on a calendar the day the registration issues: year 5 to 6, year 9 to 10, and every ten years after. Deadline tracking does this automatically for every mark in a portfolio.
2. Before you file the declaration, delete goods or services you no longer sell. It is free before filing and $250 per class after.
3. Consider Section 15 with your first Section 8. If the registration is on the Principal Register, the mark has been in continuous use for five consecutive years after registration, and no challenge is pending, filing Section 15 makes your right to use the mark incontestable. Filed together, the two cost $575 per class instead of $325.
4. Keep dated proof of use for every product or service in the registration: photos of labels and tags, or web pages showing the mark next to a way to buy.
5. If you registered through the Madrid system, renew at WIPO too. The USPTO cannot renew your international registration for you.

Sources

• 15 U.S.C. §§ 1057(c), 1058, 1059, 1064, 1065, 1066a, 1066b, 1127, 1141k (govinfo.gov)
• USPTO, post-registration FAQs: https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/maintain/post-registration-faqs and "Keeping your registration alive": https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/maintain/keeping-your-registration-alive
• USPTO fee schedule (trademark fees effective January 18, 2025): https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/fees-and-payment/uspto-fee-schedule
• USPTO, post-registration audit program: https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/maintain/post-registration-audit-program
• USPTO, expungement and reexamination: https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/protect/requesting-expungement-or-reexamination-proceeding and the May 8, 2025 announcement: https://www.uspto.gov/subscription-center/2025/50000-goods-and-services-canceled-trademark-registrations-using-tma
• TMEP § 1604.04, quoting Checkers Drive-In Restaurants, Inc. v. Commissioner of Patents & Trademarks, 51 F.3d 1078 (D.C. Cir. 1995)
• DuPont Cellophane Co. v. Waxed Products Co., 85 F.2d 75 (2d Cir. 1936); King-Seeley Thermos Co. v. Aladdin Industries, Inc., 321 F.2d 577 (2d Cir. 1963); Elliott v. Google, Inc., 860 F.3d 1151 (9th Cir. 2017); Bayer Co. v. United Drug Co., 272 F. 505 (S.D.N.Y. 1921)
• USPTO register records: OCULUS, serial 86982976; XBOX LIVE, serial 78168878 (TSDR: https://tsdr.uspto.gov)
• Register counts: GleanMark analysis of public USPTO case-file events and registration records, October 2026