U.S. Trademark Applications on Intent to Use (% of Filings)

## What this measures

The percentage of each month's new trademark applications filed under Section 1(b) of the Lanham Act, intent to use: the applicant swears it intends to use the mark but is not yet selling under it.

## Why it matters

Intent-to-use filings are the product pipeline: brands reserved before launch. A rising share means more launches ahead relative to brands already on sale.

## How to read it

Higher means more of the month's filings are for products that do not exist yet. The series starts in January 2000 at 65.7%. The latest month, September 2026, is 51.0%. The high is 67.0% (February 2000) and the low 26.1% (December 2020).

## What it does not say

An application is not a launch: many marks are abandoned, refused or never used, and one company can file many marks for one product. Counts move with USPTO fees and rules (the USPTO raised fees and changed how goods are described in January 2025) as well as with demand. Foreign applicants often file on their home registration (Sections 44 and 66) rather than on use or intent to use, so the share moves with the foreign share too.

## How it's built

One count per application (serial number), by filing date. History from January 2000 comes from the annual backfile; from January 2025 Palanor keeps one row per application, first seen in the backfile or a daily file, and recomputes the last 24 months on every run. A month is published a week after it ends: new applications reach the daily file the day they are entered. Intent to use = the application's "filed as intent to use" flag.

## Source

United States Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Full Text XML Data (No Images): the annual applications backfile (2025 edition, every application to April 3, 2026) and the daily applications files after it, from the USPTO Open Data Portal (data.uspto.gov). Public domain; Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office, www.uspto.gov. Refreshed daily by /api/cron/uspto-trademarks-sync.