Getting a trademark registered in 2026 is harder than ever before, and the trend is not likely to reverse because it’s structural rather than procedural. Here’s what you need to know about registering trademarks with the USPTO, along with what you can do to maximize your chances of success. 

In 2024, the USPTO received nearly 765,000 trademark applications, a 4% increase over the year prior. Currently, the federal register holds over 3.5 million active marks, and the filing volumes have been consistently elevated since 2020. By numbers alone, the pool of potentially conflicting marks that an examining attorney must consider when reviewing a new application has never been larger.

Practically, this affects new trademarks in two ways. Firstly, as the register fills, the probability that a new application conflicts with an existing mark increases. A likelihood of confusion refusal under Section 2(d) is already one of the most commonly issued office actions, but more applications and registrations only exacerbate the problem. Secondly, the examination process for each new application is lengthier due to the amount of potentially conflicting applications an examining attorney needs to consider upon review. 

Since the USPTO does not limit likelihood of confusion analysis to identical classes, but related goods instead, the problem is only compounded. Clothing and jewelry, beverages and snacks, software and business services: these categories and many others are routinely treated as related for examination purposes. An applicant whose mark clears a search for identical marks in the same class may still face a refusal based on a confusingly similar mark in an adjacent class. Clearance searches that do not account for this routinely produce applications that encounter substantive problems months later.

Over the past decade, one of the most significant contributors to the register’s saturation has been excessive foreign filings, particularly from China. Chinese applicants have filed close to one million US trademark applications over the past ten years. A significant portion of these applications was submitted in bad faith, with no genuine intent to use the marks in US commerce. Rather than establishing legitimate brand rights, they were designed to occupy space on the register, i.e., for trademark squatting purposes. 

In response to this, the USPTO introduced a series of reforms, including a requirement that foreign applicants be represented by a US-licensed attorney and enhanced scrutiny of specimens submitted by foreign filers. These reforms have reduced the volume of new fraudulent filings to a degree, although they haven’t reversed the effect that a decade of excessive filings has had on the register. The classes most heavily targeted by foreign filers remain among the most congested on the register, and legitimate applicants operating in those categories face correspondingly higher refusal risk.

To wit, Class 25 (clothing and apparel) is the most thoroughly filed in. Nearly 67% of use-based Chinese applications in that class filed in 2017 included fraudulent specimens. Class 9 (electronics and software) tells a similar story by volume, accounting for around 20% of all USPTO trademark filings and closely mirroring China's dominant export sectors. Class 35 (retail and business services), which is a coordinated class for both, compounds the problem further. Legitimate applicants in any of these categories are competing for space against a slew of bad-faith filings.

The register’s state can also be attributed to the USPTO’s failure to keep up with the current filing volumes. Between 2019 and 2024, the USPTO hired 58 fewer trademark examining attorneys than planned due to difficulty attracting qualified candidates and increasing attrition rates. That shortfall contributed to a first-action pendency that reached 8.5 months in 2023.

This decline was later improved through a targeted hiring effort in late 2024, in which the USPTO hired 56 new trademark examining attorneys. By December 2024, average first-action pendency had dropped to 6.1 months. However, the progress was short-lived, and in early 2025, a federal hiring freeze reversed the progress, pushing the pendency to more than a year.

For new applicants, delayed responses from the office mean that unidentified problems at the clearance stage could surface later at a much greater cost. A trademark that’s found to be confusingly similar to a previously registered mark after twelve months of pendency has already consumed filing and attorney’s fees, and business planning resources. Responding to that refusal requires additional investment, with no guarantee of success.

When combined, a saturated register, sustained foreign filings, and limited examination capacity leave a narrower margin for error in new trademark applications. Filings that might have passed examination a decade ago now face more scrutiny because of a more congested space.

The only reliable step applicants can take to avoid conflicts down the line is to extend their clearance searches beyond just identical matches on Google or in their immediate class of goods and services. In addition, the goods and services descriptions they use need to accurately reflect their actual commercial use, not aspirations. In line with this, the specimens they submit need to demonstrate actual use in commerce in connection with their identified goods and services.

Each of these elements is equally important because applications that are filed carefully, cleared properly, and supported by precise evidence of use are better positioned for successful registration without unnecessary delays. Business owners shouldn’t wait for the register to become less crowded, but rather to file the best possible application sooner rather than later.

The federal register has grown substantially, with over 3.3 million active marks currently on file and nearly 765,000 new applications received in FY 2024 alone. A larger register means a higher probability that any new application will conflict with an existing mark. Likelihood of confusion refusals are already issued in approximately one in five applications, and that rate reflects sustained filing volumes that show no sign of declining.

Chinese applicants have filed close to one million US trademark applications over the past ten years, many of which were filed without genuine intent to use the marks in commerce. This has significantly increased register density in affected classes, raising the likelihood that legitimate US applicants will encounter conflicting marks during examination. USPTO reforms have reduced fraudulent foreign filings but have not reversed the long-term effect on register saturation.

The most effective steps are conducting a clearance search that accounts for confusingly similar marks in related classes, not just identical marks in the same class; drafting a goods and services description that accurately reflects actual commercial use; and preparing a specimen that clearly demonstrates use in commerce. Applications that address these elements before filing are materially less likely to generate avoidable office actions during examination.