Trademark Office exceeds Fiscal Year 2025 goals
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) surpassed all major trademark performance goals for Fiscal Year 2025, which ended September 30. In Fiscal Year 2025, they reduced average first action pendency by 25% and disposal pendency by 17%. They closed the year at 5.6 months for first action pendency and 11.7 months for disposal pendency. Increased productivity across their examining attorneys also lowered the inventory of unexamined application classes to 346,378, a reduction of more than 90,000 classes in Fiscal Year 2025 alone. Trademark demand remained strong in Fiscal Year 2025. Applicants filed more than 824,000 new classes, a 7.4% increase from Fiscal Year 2024. Despite this growth, examination speed and quality continued to improve. Both quality measures exceeded their targets for the year. Fiscal Year 2025 Trademark performance highlights:
| Performance measure | Fiscal Year 2025 goal | Fiscal Year 2025 actual |
| Average time to first action | 6.7 months | 5.6 months |
| Average total processing time | 13 months | 11.7 months |
| Quality first action compliance | 95.5% | 96.3% |
| Quality final compliance | 97.0% | 98.5% |
To maintain this momentum, the Trademark Office plans to hire additional trademark examining attorneys in Fiscal Year 2026. Their long-term goal is to reduce the first action pendency to four months and total processing time to nine months by fiscal year 2028.
These results show the USPTO’s ongoing commitment to timely, high-quality trademark services that help businesses protect their brands and grow with confidence. Hopefully, they will continue to build on this progress to support trademark owners and strengthen brand protection.