How to Trademark Your Clothing Brand: Trademarking in Europe vs the United States

Now In Store Jul 19, 2017 · 8 min read

Your brand name is one of the few things a competitor cannot copy — but only if you have registered it. For a clothing label, where the name on the label is the product as far as most buyers are concerned, that matters more than in almost any other trade.

This guide covers registering a clothing trademark in the United States and in Europe, and where the two differ. Two things have changed since guides like this were first written, and both catch people out:

An EU trade mark no longer covers the UK. Since 1 January 2021 the EUTM covers 27 member states and Britain is not one of them. If you sell into both, that is two applications, not one.
The US filing system was replaced in January 2025. TEAS is gone, along with the TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard tiers everyone used to compare. There is now one filing route and one base fee.

What you can actually trademark

Register the name first, in plain text, with no styling. A word mark protects the name however you set it — which means you can redesign the logo later without refiling. Designers get this backwards constantly, registering a beautiful logo and discovering that the protection evaporates the moment they rebrand.

Once the name is secured, you can add the logo and any slogan. Beyond that, distinctive non-functional features can qualify — Louboutin’s red soles and Tiffany’s blue boxes are the famous examples — but those are hard-won and usually require proof that buyers already associate the feature with you.

Your actual garment designs, prints and artwork are a different right. That is copyright, and in some jurisdictions registered or unregistered design rights, not trademark. Most labels register trademarks first and deal with designs separately as collections develop.

Classes: get this right before you file

Trademarks are registered against classes of goods, from the 45 international Nice classes. For apparel the ones that matter are:

Class 25 — clothing, footwear, headgear
Class 18 — leather goods, bags, luggage
Class 14 — jewellery and watches
Class 35 — retail services, if you run a shop selling other brands too

Classes drive the cost everywhere, so decide early whether you are a Class 25 label or a Class 25 + 18 label. Adding a class later means a fresh application, not an amendment.

Registering in the United States

Search first. Use the USPTO’s search tool to check for existing marks that are identical or confusingly similar. Fees are non-refundable, so a rejection costs you the whole filing fee. For clothing, the design search code 09.03 covers apparel imagery.

File through Trademark Center. This is the part most older guides get wrong. The Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) was retired on 18 January 2025, and Trademark Center is now the only route. The TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard tiers no longer exist.

The fee structure changed with it. There is a single base application fee of $350 per class, with surcharges if you make the examiner’s job harder:

$100 per class if your application is missing required information
A further surcharge per class if you write your own description of goods instead of picking from the USPTO’s pre-approved Acceptable Identification of Goods and Services manual

The practical advice: use the pre-approved descriptions. A custom description feels more precise and costs you more for no benefit in most apparel filings.

If you are not domiciled in the US, you must be represented by a US-licensed attorney. This has been a hard requirement since August 2019 and it applies to any foreign-domiciled applicant — so a UK or EU label filing in America cannot DIY this, whatever a guide written before 2019 tells you. Budget for it.

Then it goes to an examining attorney, who checks it against the register and the statutory grounds. If they are satisfied it is published in the Official Gazette for opposition. If they are not, you get an Office Action to respond to. Track everything through TSDR (Trademark Status & Document Retrieval).

On timing, treat any specific figure you read with suspicion, this one included. USPTO pendency has moved considerably in recent years and the office publishes current first-action and total-pendency figures — check those rather than a number in a blog post.

Keeping a US registration alive

This is the trap that costs people their marks. A US registration is not simply renewed every ten years. There is an extra step early on:

Between years 5 and 6 — file a Declaration of Use (Section 8) proving you are actually using the mark in commerce. Miss it and the registration is cancelled, whatever you paid to get it.
Between years 9 and 10, and every 10 years after — file the combined declaration and renewal.

Put the year-5 date in a calendar the day your certificate arrives.

Registering in Europe — and why it is now two decisions

Before Brexit, one EU trade mark covered the whole single market including Britain. That is no longer the case, and it is the single biggest change to this topic in a decade.

The EU: EUIPO

An EU trade mark (EUTM) is filed with the European Union Intellectual Property Office in Alicante and covers all 27 member states with one application. Fees:

€850 — basic fee, first class
€50 — second class
€150 — each class from the third onward

Note the shape of that: the second class costs €50 and the third costs €150. If you are a clothing label who also sells bags, adding Class 18 alongside Class 25 costs €50. Older guides that quote “€850 for three classes” are simply wrong — that has not been the structure since 2016.

The UK: UKIPO — a separate application

Any EUTM filed after 31 December 2020 gives you no protection in the UK. You need a separate application to the UK Intellectual Property Office.

UK fees rose on 1 April 2026 — the first increase since 1998, so any figure you find in an older article is out of date:

£205 — online application, first class (was £170)
£60 — each additional class (was £50)
£245 — renewal, first class (was £200), plus £60 per additional class

If you held an EUTM before Brexit, read this

The UK automatically created comparable UK registrations on 1 January 2021 for every EUTM that existed then, at no cost. Those are real UK rights and you keep them.

But there is a deadline that has now passed and that many owners have not registered: since 1 January 2026, you can no longer rely on use of the mark in the EU to defend the UK comparable right. The five-year grace period ran out. If your brand has been used in France and Germany but never genuinely in Britain, that comparable UK registration is now vulnerable to a non-use cancellation action.

If that describes you, it is worth an actual conversation with a trademark attorney rather than a blog post.

Benelux and single countries

You can also register nationally. Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg share one office — BOIP — so a Benelux registration covers all three. Other countries have their own national offices. This is usually only worth it if you genuinely trade in one market and have no European ambitions, since an EUTM covering 27 states is not much more than a couple of national filings. Check the relevant office’s current fees directly.

Filing in several countries: the Madrid route

If you want protection across the US, the EU, the UK and elsewhere, the Madrid Protocol lets you file one international application through WIPO, based on a home registration, and designate the territories you want. It is generally cheaper and easier to administer than filing separately everywhere, and renewals are centralised.

The catch worth knowing: for the first five years an international registration depends on the home application it was based on. If that home mark falls, the international registrations designated from it can fall with it — a “central attack”. Not a reason to avoid Madrid, just a reason to make sure the home application is solid first.

What this costs, roughly

Territory	First class	Additional classes
United States (USPTO)	$350	$350 each, plus surcharges if incomplete
European Union (EUIPO)	€850	€50 second, €150 from third
United Kingdom (UKIPO)	£205	£60 each

Official fees only. Attorney fees are separate and, for the US, unavoidable if you are foreign-domiciled. Registrations last ten years everywhere and are renewable indefinitely — with the US year-5 declaration noted above.

Verify every figure with the office before you file. Fee schedules change — the US restructured in January 2025 and the UK in April 2026, both within eighteen months of each other after long periods of stability.

Once the name is yours

A registered mark is worth more when it is visible and used consistently — on the garment, on the packaging, and on everything you put in front of a buyer. If you are building the wholesale side of the business, our free line sheet templates and the wholesale contract template are a reasonable starting point for putting the brand in front of stockists properly.

Accurate as of August 2026. This is general information about a legal process, not legal advice — trademark law is jurisdiction-specific and the consequences of getting it wrong are expensive. Confirm current fees and requirements with the USPTO, EUIPO or UKIPO directly, and take proper advice before filing.

Now In Store

Now In Store builds Foldsquare and Flook — catalog, line sheet and flipbook tools for wholesale and retail brands. On the Shopify App Store since 2013. Individual contributors are credited at the end of each post.