When a Trademark Portfolio Stops Being Protection and Starts Being Infrastructure

I built GleanMark to make trademark data accessible. This is part of a series where I use our platform to tell stories the data reveals — stories that are hard to see when you are working one filing at a time.

Here is one that surprised me: out of the more than 12 million marks in the USPTO database, our analysis found roughly 44 that are registered or pending in 40 or more Nice Classification classes. Forty classes. The Nice system only has 45.

That is not brand protection. That is infrastructure.

The Shape of a Normal Portfolio

To understand why 40-plus classes is extraordinary, you need to see what normal looks like.

The vast majority of trademark filings cover a single class. Our analysis of GleanMark's database shows approximately 11.4 million marks filed in just one class. Another 1.2 million cover two to nine classes. Around 43,000 span ten or more. And then there is a thin tail — a few hundred marks in 20-plus classes, a few dozen in 30-plus, and those roughly 44 marks stretching across 40 or more.

On the owner side, the distribution is similarly concentrated. Approximately 44,400 distinct portfolio owners file in only one to three classes. About 5,500 span four to nine. Around 1,400 reach ten or more. Fewer than 200 operate across 20-plus classes.

The brands that reach 40 classes are not just filing broadly. They are making a deliberate, expensive decision to claim territory across nearly the entire classification system. Each class means a separate filing fee, a separate specimen or statement of use, and a separate maintenance obligation stretching decades into the future. These portfolios cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build and maintain.

The question is: why do they do it?

LIDL: 43 Classes and a Grocery Store

The broadest single-mark filing I found in GleanMark's data is LIDL, the German discount grocery chain. Serial number 79409763 spans 43 Nice classes with 14 active registrations tied to the mark.

Forty-three classes for a grocery store.

The goods and services descriptions read like a catalog of everything a modern retailer might conceivably touch. Class 9 covers computer software and electronic payment systems. Class 16 covers printed matter and paper goods. Class 35 covers retail services and advertising. Class 36 covers financial services and insurance. Class 39 covers delivery and transportation. Class 43 covers restaurant and catering services. That is six classes just from a quick sample — and there are 37 more.

What LIDL is doing is not protecting a name. It is building a fence around a business model. Discount grocery is the core, but the trademark portfolio maps a much larger territory: mobile payments, delivery logistics, financial products, food service, clothing, household goods, telecommunications. Every class is a door LIDL has propped open for the future, and a door it has closed to competitors who might try to use the LIDL name in adjacent markets.

This is what I mean by infrastructure. The trademark portfolio is not reacting to what LIDL does today. It is defining what LIDL could do tomorrow.

Red Bull: The Energy Drink That Files Like a Conglomerate

RED BULL covers 40 Nice classes across 20 active registrations.

The specific Madrid Protocol registration from 2007 (serial 79051172) spans 36 classes on its own — an enormous filing for a company that, at least in the popular imagination, sells energy drinks.

But look at the class coverage and the popular imagination falls apart. Red Bull files in Class 41 (entertainment and sporting events), Class 38 (telecommunications and broadcasting), Class 16 (printed publications), Class 25 (clothing), Class 28 (sporting goods), and Class 9 (software and electronic media). This is a media company that happens to make a beverage. Or a beverage company that decided it also wanted to be a media company. The trademark portfolio does not draw a distinction — and that is the point.

Red Bull's brand strategy over the past two decades has been to become synonymous with extreme sports, music, and youth culture. The trademark filings preceded the business moves. They filed in media and entertainment classes before launching Red Bull TV. They filed in clothing classes before building a significant apparel business. The portfolio was the blueprint.

Toyota: Different Marks, Different Strategies

Not every broad portfolio takes the same shape. Toyota illustrates how a single owner uses different marks for different levels of territorial ambition.

TOYOTA CENTURY (serial 79369637) covers 19 classes — a focused filing for a luxury vehicle brand that extends into accessories, clothing, and lifestyle goods. LAND CRUISER (serial 79400714) covers 21 classes, reflecting a brand that has expanded into outdoor gear and adventure-adjacent categories.

Neither of these is a 40-class filing. But they show something important about how sophisticated brand owners think: the breadth of the filing matches the breadth of the brand's ambition. CENTURY is a luxury play — the classes map to the luxury lifestyle ecosystem. LAND CRUISER is an adventure play — the classes map to outdoor and expedition categories.

The trademark portfolio tells you where the brand is going before the marketing campaign does.

The Time Dimension: Broad Filings Are Accelerating

Our data shows an interesting trend in how many marks are filed broadly over time. Marks covering 10 or more classes have been climbing steadily.

In 2019, GleanMark's analysis shows approximately 2,800 such filings. By 2021, that number had risen to around 4,400. In 2023, it reached roughly 5,700. And in 2024, the total was approximately 5,900 — though the final count may still be climbing as applications work through the system.

For context, total filing volumes rose from roughly 480,000 in 2019 to approximately 596,500 in 2024. The share of broad filings is growing faster than the market overall.

Several forces are driving this. Global brand expansion means companies need to stake claims in more categories earlier. The Madrid Protocol makes it cheaper to extend a mark across many classes through a single international filing. And the strategic value of preemptive filing — claiming classes before you need them — has become more widely understood, particularly among tech companies that may enter entirely new product categories within a few years.

Portfolio Age and Breadth: The Correlation

One of the most striking patterns in the data is the relationship between how long a portfolio owner has been active and how broadly they file.

Owners whose earliest filing is less than one year old have an average class breadth of approximately 3.5 classes. For owners active five to nine years, the average rises to about 4.5. Owners with portfolios spanning 15 or more years average roughly 5.5 classes.

This makes intuitive sense. Brands that survive and grow tend to expand into adjacent categories. A clothing company adds accessories. A software company adds consulting services. A food company adds restaurant services. Each expansion means new class coverage, and the trademark portfolio grows to match the business.

But there is a chicken-and-egg question here. Do successful brands file more broadly because they expand, or does broad filing enable the expansion by clearing the competitive field? The answer, based on the examples above, appears to be both.

Cencora: The Blitz-Filing Alternative

Not every broad portfolio is built gradually over decades. Sometimes a company needs coverage everywhere, immediately.

On January 23, 2023, Cencora — formerly AmerisourceBergen, one of the largest pharmaceutical distributors in the world — filed 52 trademark applications in a single day. All for the new CENCORA name. All at once.

This is the trademark equivalent of a land rush. When a Fortune 15 company rebrands, it cannot afford to leave gaps. A competitor or squatter filing CENCORA in Class 5 (pharmaceuticals) or Class 35 (distribution services) or Class 42 (technology) would create an expensive, distracting legal battle at the worst possible time — right when the company is trying to establish its new identity.

So Cencora filed everywhere. The cost of 52 simultaneous applications is significant — tens of thousands in filing fees alone, before attorney time — but it is a rounding error compared to the cost of a rebrand gone wrong.

This blitz approach contrasts sharply with the organic expansion model. LIDL built its 43-class portfolio over years, extending into new categories as the business grew. Cencora needed full coverage on day one. Both strategies produce broad portfolios, but the motivations and execution are completely different.

What the Breadth Data Tells Practitioners

If you are an attorney advising clients on trademark portfolio building, this data has practical implications.

Broad filings are a signal, not just a strategy. When a competitor files in 20 or more classes, that is not defensiveness — it is a roadmap. The class list tells you where they plan to compete. If your client's categories overlap with those filings, it is worth flagging early, before the competitor actually enters the market and starts enforcement actions.

The single-class norm is a vulnerability. Most marks are filed in one class because most applicants are thinking about what they do today, not what they might do in three years. For clients with growth ambitions — particularly in tech, consumer goods, or retail — a single-class filing may leave valuable territory unprotected. The cost of filing additional classes at the outset is a fraction of the cost of fighting a junior user who got there first.

Rebrand timing demands blitz coverage. The Cencora example is instructive. If your client is planning a rebrand, the trademark filing strategy needs to be complete before the announcement, not after. Waiting creates openings that are expensive to close.

Portfolio breadth correlates with portfolio longevity. The data showing broader filings among longer-lived portfolios is not just descriptive — it is prescriptive. Clients who invest in breadth early tend to be the ones who are still building on that foundation a decade later.

These Are Not Product Launches. They Are Territorial Claims.

The brands that file across 30 or 40 classes are not confused about their business. They are not filing defensively in classes they will never use. They are building infrastructure — the legal scaffolding for a business that does not exist yet but might, and that competitors cannot easily enter.

When LIDL files in 43 classes, it is not because a German discount grocer needs trademark protection for telecommunications services today. It is because LIDL wants the option to offer financial products, delivery logistics, mobile apps, and a dozen other services under its own name, in its own time, without asking anyone's permission.

That is what a trademark portfolio looks like when it stops being protection and starts being infrastructure.

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Howard Katzenberg is the founder of GleanMark, a trademark intelligence platform. All data sourced from the USPTO's public trademark database via GleanMark. Data is current as of March 2026.