The 2026 Guide to Trademark Renewal: Deadlines You Need to Know

Getting your trademark registered with the USPTO is a major milestone — but it isn’t the finish line. A federal registration only stays alive if you file specific maintenance documents on a recurring schedule. Miss one, and the USPTO can cancel or let the registration expire, no matter how strong your brand is in the marketplace.

Year 5–6: the Section 8 Declaration of Use

Your first maintenance deadline falls between the 5th and 6th anniversary of your registration date. During that window, you must file a Section 8 Declaration of Use, confirming (with a specimen showing current use) that you’re still actively using the mark in commerce for the goods or services listed. Miss the deadline and you get a 6-month grace period — but it comes with an additional government surcharge, and once that grace period closes, the registration is cancelled outright.

Most owners file a Combined Section 8 & 15 at this stage rather than a standalone Section 8. The Section 15 Declaration of Incontestability isn’t required, but if your mark has been in continuous use for 5 straight years and meets a few other conditions, it upgrades your registration’s legal standing — making it significantly harder for someone to challenge your rights later on descriptiveness grounds.

Year 9–10: Section 9 renewal

Your next deadline arrives between the 9th and 10th anniversary of registration, and it repeats every 10 years after that for as long as you keep the mark alive. At this checkpoint you file a Section 9 Renewal Application, again combined with a Section 8 Declaration of Use. Together, these two filings are what actually keep a federal registration in force indefinitely — trademarks, unlike patents, don’t have a hard expiration date as long as you keep using the mark and keep filing on time.

What happens if you miss a deadline

If a Section 8 or Section 9 deadline passes without a filing, and the grace period, where available, also lapses, the USPTO cancels or expires the registration. At that point your brand loses its federal protection — the presumption of nationwide rights, the ® symbol, the ability to sue in federal court for infringement, all of it. You’d be starting over with a brand-new application, a new filing date, and no guarantee a competitor hasn’t already claimed the space in the meantime.

A simple way to never miss one

The deadlines aren’t complicated, but they’re easy to lose track of over a 10-year span — especially if the person who filed the original application has moved on, or the trademark sits with whoever handles “legal stuff” as a side task. Two habits fix this: mark your calendar the moment your registration issues, and consider an ongoing monitoring service that tracks your filing windows alongside watching for conflicting new applications.