Salary · United States
Trademark pay in 2026: law firm versus in-house.
NALP's intellectual-property first-year median as of January 1, 2025 was $225,000. That cell mixes patent with trademark. A general counsel who budgets a brand seat from it, or off a patent-attorney ladder, is using a number that does not measure this work.
Four public cells. None of them is a trademark median.
Sartori maps about 67,000 lawyers in New York. The 2026 trademark attorney salary a company meets is four dated public cells, not a patent or lumped-IP average. A general counsel posting a brand seat, and a lawyer reading the posting, are looking at two products under the same three words.
Legal Business reported on June 3, 2026 that Milbank raised the class-of-2025-26 associate base to $235,000, effective July 1, with no practice-area carve-out. A trademark associate on that ladder is paid the same base as a patent, corporate, or litigation associate of the same class year. Same year, same base.
Pick the cell that matches the seat you are filling or sitting in. The lockstep, the lumped IP median, the General Schedule, and the in-house title band are four different instruments. NALP, OPM, USPTO and ACC citations.
- 4,217
- Trademark cases filed in U.S. district courts in the year ending September 30, 2025, against 4,422 patent cases — filing volume is not a smaller docket.
- Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Table C-7, September 30, 2025
- 810
- Trademark examining attorneys at the USPTO at FY 2025 year-end, against 9,086 patent examiners. Government economics are patent-heavy; the Article III docket is not.
- USPTO FY 2025 Agency Financial Report
- 38%
- Non-resident share of 2024 filing at the U.S. trademark office — a mandatory-counsel pool under 37 C.F.R. § 2.11(a), not a patent-cycle statistic.
- WIPO World Intellectual Property Indicators 2025, trademarks highlights
What a trademark attorney salary is not
The first-year intellectual-property median is the number most search results still recycle. It is a January 1, 2025 office-reported base for a lumped practice group. The rest of that ladder, and the all-associate ladder it sits above, are the part the headline hides.
Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025 put mean annual pay for lawyers, SOC 23-1011, at $185,840 — an occupation-wide mean, not a trademark series. There is no BLS trademark-attorney occupation code to fall back on. New York coverage is how the trademark desk shows up as a hiring label distinct from patent and from lumped intellectual property.
NALP’s 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey, as of January 1, 2025, put the all-associate first-year median at $200,000 across 437 responding offices and at $215,000 in firms of more than 700 lawyers. As of that same January 1, 2025 NALP date, the intellectual-property first-year median printed $25,000 higher than the all-associate median nationally, and $15,000 higher at firms of 250 or fewer lawyers ($165,000 against $150,000). NALP Bulletin+ in June 2025 added the distribution: $225,000 accounted for 32.0 percent of all reported first-year salaries and 44.7 percent among offices in firms of 701 or more lawyers, and it was the median starting salary in six of 19 tabulated cities, including New York City. The median for the whole survey was still $200,000. Modal is not median, and neither is a trademark cut.
AIPLA’s 2025 Report of the Economic Survey exists and, on the public page, does not print 2024 or 2025 dollar medians. The 2022 AIPLA gross-income figures are not 2026 trademark pay.
| Associate year | IP, all sizes | IP, 251–700 | IP, 701+ | All practices, all sizes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2nd year | $235,000 | $235,000 | $235,000 | $210,000 |
| 3rd year | $260,000 | $260,000 | $260,000 | $220,625 |
| 4th year | $305,000 | $310,000 | $305,000 | $238,125 |
| 5th year | $340,000 | $365,000 | $340,000 | $255,000 |
| 6th year | $360,000 | $390,000 | $360,000 | $271,175 |
| 7th year | $385,000 | $420,000 | $385,000 | $286,700 |
| 8th year | $400,000 | $435,000 | $400,000 | $330,000 |
Source: NALP 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey Special Report to Survey Participants, medians as of January 1, 2025. Office-reported bases. Not total compensation, not in-house, not trademark-only.
At firms of 251 to 700 lawyers, the eighth-year intellectual-property median as of January 1, 2025 was $435,000. At firms of 701 or more it was $400,000. The all-associate eighth-year median, all sizes, was $330,000. Those rungs are still lumped intellectual property. A general counsel who copies the 251–700 eighth-year IP median into a brand-counsel requisition has copied a firm-side, mixed-practice cell into a corporate title.
The 2026 lockstep reset that cell without splitting it. Above the Law, on June 2, 2026, reported $10,000 increases for the junior classes and $20,000 increases for the 2021 through 2018 classes, effective July 1, 2026. Biglaw Investor’s 1968–2026 scale table lists 2026 bases of $245,000, $270,000, $320,000, $385,000, $410,000, $440,000 and $455,000 for years 2 through 8 against a 2025 ladder that ran $225,000 to $435,000. A fourth-year on the new scale prints $320,000 before bonus; a fifth-year prints $385,000. Those dollars are what a trademark associate at a matching firm earns. They are also what every other associate of that class year earns. The lockstep is not a trademark survey.
The examining-attorney band is the one public cell that is actually trademark-titled, and it is a federal General Schedule job, not a market salary. USPTO careers copy states that trademark examining attorneys start at GS-9 (law graduates) or GS-11 (bar members) and advance through GS-12, GS-13 and GS-14. The January 2026 Washington-Baltimore-Arlington table is the locality that applies to Alexandria headquarters.
GS-11 step 1
Typical entry for a bar member hired as a trademark examining attorney.
OPM Salary Table 2026-DCB, January 2026 ↗A lumped intellectual-property median is not a trademark number.
What the lawyer actually takes home depends on which desk they sit.
The same human can be paid a class-year lockstep, a boutique IP cell, a General Schedule, or an in-house title band. The work product overlaps. The cash instrument does not.
Legal 500 United States does not rank a single “intellectual property” trademark seat. It splits the work into Trademarks: non-contentious (prosecution, portfolio management and licensing) and Trademarks: litigation. A lawyer earning firm-side cash is usually in one of those two products, not in a patent group that also files trademarks. Capability-page labels in current use include Trademark & Brand Management, Trademark Litigation & Counseling, and Trademark, Copyright, Advertising Litigation & Brand Management.
Three employer tiers sit under those labels. Trademark boutiques hire associates and counsel as the core product. Large IP firms run a branded brand-management group. Am Law full-service and litigation shops try Lanham Act, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, and International Trade Commission matters and often pay the 2026 class-year lockstep. At the first two tiers, NALP’s intellectual-property cell at firms of 250 or fewer lawyers — a $165,000 first-year median as of January 1, 2025 — is the closer public comparator than the matching-firm lockstep. Foreign-domiciled owners remain mandatory buyers of that firm-side time: 37 C.F.R. § 2.11(a), in force since August 3, 2019, requires a U.S.-licensed attorney for any applicant, registrant, or party whose domicile is not in the United States.
We have worked the New York associate market for more than 10 years, for law firms and for companies putting a junior or mid-level trademark lawyer on the payroll. Over the trailing three years we closed 33 associate searches on that line, at a 93 percent completion rate, on a typical timeline of six to 12 weeks. The lockstep files in that book did not need a trademark premium argued into the offer; they needed the class year to be right. The boutique files needed the NALP small-firm IP cell treated as a ceiling, not as a lockstep match.
On the company side the live title is Trademark Counsel, or a seat on a Trademark & Copyright team, parallel to patent prosecution and IP litigation — not inside them. Apple Legal’s official careers search listed Trademark Counsel in Cupertino, Corporate Functions, on September 1, 2026, as a separate family from Senior Counsel, Intellectual Property (transactions) and Senior Legal Counsel — IP Litigation. That listing is title evidence. It does not disclose a pay band.
Association of Corporate Counsel’s 2025 survey, 1,632 respondents, data effective March 1, 2025, is the in-house cash instrument a head of legal actually holds. Attorney median base was $148,000 and median total cash $160,000; Senior Attorney $201,000 and $228,000; Managing Attorney $239,000 and $283,000; Associate General Counsel $245,000 and $294,000; Deputy General Counsel $280,000 and $368,000; General Counsel / Chief Legal Officer $330,000 and $410,000. An Attorney with prior law-firm experience printed a 16 percent higher median base. Chief legal officers at companies with revenue greater than $5 billion made 44 percent more in base than chief legal officers at organizations under $1 billion. None of those rows is trademark.
USPTO slides dated September 30, 2025, on representation, signatures, and ethics, state that an in-house attorney qualified to practice may be attorney of record but may not sign as a corporate representative unless also identified as a corporate officer or equivalent. “Senior Vice President and General Counsel” is the acceptable example; “Senior Trademark Counsel” is not an acceptable corporate-signatory title. The in-house trademark seat is attorney-of-record work. It is not a paralegal filing desk, and it is not paid off a patent-litigation specialty because the survey happened to list one.
The general counsel is buying a brand docket, not an IP average.
The person who signs the requisition is usually a general counsel, a chief legal officer, or a head of legal. The error we see is not that they underpay on purpose. It is that the range they inherited was built for a different seat.
Inside the same New York interview cohort, 94 of 142 lawyers whose current seat was trademark, brand management, or copyright — a 24-month window — said the last compensation conversation they sat in used an intellectual-property or patent comparator rather than a trademark cell. Of those 142, 81 sat in-house, reporting to a general counsel or a head of legal, and 61 sat at firms. Of the 81 in-house, 57 said human resources had pulled the Association of Corporate Counsel Attorney or Expert Attorney title band, or the Litigation - IP/patent specialty, as the posted range.
A general counsel at a U.S. consumer-products company told us the band they inherited was the Expert Attorney median, and that lockstep mid-levels they actually needed would not take a first meeting. A head of legal at a mid-market apparel group said they had posted “IP counsel” and spent the search window interviewing patent prosecutors. Both conversations sat inside the same cohort. Neither organization had a trademark-only survey to hand, because none is published. The failure is the comparator, not the budget process.
International Trademark Association membership is how brand-owner legal departments and firm trademark groups sit in the same room. INTA’s about page, as of 2026, counted more than 6,700 member organizations in 167 jurisdictions and nearly 39,000 professionals, including brand owners from major corporations, small- and medium-sized enterprises, law firms, nonprofits, and government agencies. Membership is not a license. The credential that lets counsel appear before the Office is the state bar.
Who actually writes the check for this work, by company type, is readable from the industries firm practice pages name: cosmetics, apparel, luxury, housewares, retail, consumer products, technology, publishing, financial services, hospitality, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, entertainment, software, automotive, and life sciences. Private-equity legal teams buy the same product as diligence and portfolio enforcement, usually through outside firms rather than a dedicated fund trademark counsel. A chief legal officer at a brand-owning corporate is the in-house buyer. A general counsel who staffs that buyer from a generic IP or patent cell is hiring the wrong label.
The range on the postingThe seat the company needed
- Patent-attorney ladder A technical degree and USPTO patent registration, priced off a patent cell. The brand docket does not use either gate.
- Lumped IP or “IP counsel” A posting that mixes patent prosecutors into a trademark shortlist. The Legal 500 split already told the market these are two products.
- Named trademark cell Trademark Counsel or Brand Counsel, state bar only, prosecution or Lanham Act named as the book. The range then has a cell it can defend.
Pick the cell before you post the range.
Demand in 2025–26 is a trademark stack, not a patent cycle.
The reason a general counsel is in the market for this seat this year is not that patent filings moved. It is a pile of trademark-specific rules, fees, Board volume, and border enforcement that all land on the same desk.
The USPTO FY 2025 Agency Financial Report counted 824,192 trademark application classes, 57,054 more than the prior year. A December 2, 2025 Office alert put that rise at 7.4 percent, unexamined inventory at 346,378 classes, first-action pendency at 5.6 months, and disposal at 11.7 months. By May 5, 2026, first-action pendency in the first half of fiscal 2026 was 4.45 months and disposal 10.03 months, despite a 7 percent midyear filing rise. The processing-times page, updated August 10, 2026, printed 4.2 months to first examining action and 9.7 months to register or abandon. Faster first actions mean more three-month office-action work for firm and in-house prosecutors even as inventory falls. That is a junior and mid-level prosecution seat, not a patent litigator.
March 2026 was the first month above 100,000 first actions: 103,730 classes, against 83,577 new application classes that month. Fiscal 2026 midyear filings were 431,734 classes versus 403,353 in the same slice of fiscal 2025. WIPO World Intellectual Property Indicators 2025, covering calendar 2024, put the USPTO office at 795,337 application classes, among the fastest-growing top offices at 7.6 percent, with about 3.6 million trademark registrations in force. U.S. applicants accounted for 836,457 class counts in 2024, down 1.5 percent year on year. Calendar 2024 and fiscal 2025 are different vintages. Combined with the annual flow, the stock is the Section 8 and Section 9 maintenance book in-house brand counsel staff year-round.
The January 2025 trademark fee rule repriced incomplete filings. Electronic base applications cost $350 per class for Section 1 and 44 filings that meet base requirements, with a $100 insufficient-information surcharge, a $200 free-form identification surcharge, and $200 per additional 1,000-character group. Madrid Section 66(a) applications print $600 per class. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board opposition or cancellation is $600 per class; a Trademark Modernization Act expungement or reexamination petition is $400 per class. FY 2025 trademark earned revenue was $566.8 million against $567.1 million of trademark operational costs, of which personnel was $324.8 million. The FY 2026 Congressional Submission estimated $670 million of trademark fee collections. The FY 2027 budget page estimates $687 million of trademark fees and $663 million of Trademark Program spending, and still flags that, absent congressional action, fee-setting authority expires on September 15, 2026. A lapse hits public-body General Schedule seats first.
Trademark Modernization Act expungement and reexamination, in force from December 2021, is now mostly a Director-initiated product. USPTO practitioner slides dated June 24, 2025, covering December 2021 through May 2025, counted 608 third-party petitions and 2,598 Director-initiated institutions. Among Director-initiated matters, 91 percent of institutions were against China-domiciled registrants. USPTO Hour slides dated March 25, 2026, put 86,277 goods and services cancelled from fiscal 2022 to date via expungement and reexamination. Third-party petition volume is measured in hundreds. Do not staff a large petition factory from those counts. The hire this product wants is a mid-level prosecutor who can document a reasonable investigation of nonuse, plus examining-policy seats inside the Office.
The Register Protection Office is a fraud desk on top of that. On August 6, 2025, the Office issued sanctions that terminated more than 52,000 applications and registrations connected to a foreign filing firm. A May 12, 2026 alert added 11 administrative orders in the prior six months targeting removal of around 10,500 applications and registrations. USPTO Hour in March 2026 recorded fiscal 2026 sanctions orders affecting 7,349 applications and registrations, and the Register Protection Office recruiting three attorney positions. That is a specialist public seat, not lockstep, and a mid-to-senior ethics and revival book for private counsel of record whose credentials were misused.
Board volume is still climbing. Fiscal 2025 oppositions were 7,650, up 15 percent; cancellations 2,897, up 17.1 percent; appeals 3,701; extensions of time to oppose 19,130. Through the third quarter of fiscal 2026, oppositions were 6,327, up 9.3 percent against the same slice of fiscal 2025. Trial-case average total pendency was 163.4 weeks in fiscal 2025 and 151.2 weeks year-to-date in fiscal 2026. Fiscal 2025 final decisions: 405 appeals and 190 trials. Twenty-three administrative trademark judges sat at FY 2025 year-end. This is contested prosecution, not a PTAB headcount.
Administrative Office Table 4.7 put private trademark filings at 4,211 in fiscal 2025 against 2,829 in fiscal 2020. Table C-7 for the year ending September 30, 2025, printed 243 trademark filings in the Southern District of New York, 310 in the Central District of California, 1,555 in the Northern District of Illinois, 393 in the Southern District of Florida, and 153 in the Northern District of Georgia. Copyright filings in that year were 7,933; Defend Trade Secrets Act filings were 778. Pending patent inventory was higher than pending trademark inventory. Filing counts do not justify reading trademark pay off a patent-litigation cell.
The Supreme Court has made the trial product more technical, not smaller. Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc., decided June 29, 2023, held that the Lanham Act infringement provisions are not extraterritorial and extend only to claims where the infringing use in commerce is domestic. The Tenth Circuit, on April 23, 2024, confined liability to direct sales into the United States. Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC, decided June 8, 2023, held that Rogers does not apply when the accused use is as a mark. The Ninth Circuit, on August 4, 2026, then vacated a tarnishment injunction and required mark-specific fame. Vidal v. Elster, June 13, 2024, kept the names clause as an examining-attorney refusal. The Federal Circuit in Sunkist Growers, Inc. v. Intrastate Distributors, Inc., July 23, 2025, reversed a no-confusion Board dismissal. Those holdings are senior Lanham Act and Board skill. They are not a reason to staff a brand-prosecution seat from a patent-eligibility hire.
Border enforcement is a separate buyer. CBP Intellectual Property Rights seizure statistics for fiscal 2025 recorded 78.4 million items seized and $7.4 billion MSRP of seized merchandise, up from $5.4 billion in fiscal 2024. Executive Order 14324, July 30, 2025, suspended duty-free de minimis treatment for all countries after an April suspension for China and Hong Kong. The Court of International Trade, on August 13, 2026, held that IEEPA authorized that rescission of the de minimis privilege. CBP’s 2024 attorney-advisor announcement described the Intellectual Property Enforcement Branch as the central authority for legal policy on border enforcement of trademarks and copyrights, inside a Directorate of about 130 attorney-advisors. The International Trade Commission still allows trademark assertions in Section 337 investigations; the docket remains patent-heavy. A general counsel buying anti-counterfeiting counsel is not buying a USPTO prosecutor, and is not buying a patent Section 337 team by default.
The New York associate book shows where the specification breaks.
Sartori's New York associate telemetry is not a compensation survey. It is a record of what happens when a company tries to hire this seat with the wrong cell on the requisition.
Of 33 closed New York associate searches over three years, 11 were trademark-, brand-, or copyright-adjacent — firm-side trademark associates and in-house Trademark Counsel at individual-contributor seniority. Two files that opened with a USPTO patent-registration requirement were rewritten to a state-bar-only specification and then filled. One of the 11 was withdrawn when the company would not drop the patent credential. That withdrawn file is the finding that does not flatter the method: we took a brief we should have refused until the cell was named.
Counter-offer incidence on the New York associate line sat at 37 percent. Among 8 offers extended on the trademark-adjacent files, 3 drew a counter. Median offer-to-acceptance on the line is 11 working days. Typical time-to-fill is six to 12 weeks. The 93 percent completion rate is the New York associate book. The stall we do see is almost always the specification, not the shortlist.
A consumer-products general counsel came in with a “senior IP counsel” brief at an Expert Attorney cash level. The work was USPTO prosecution, Madrid filings, and CBP recordation. Three of the first four candidates held patent registration. The specification was rewritten to Trademark Counsel, state bar only, seven to ten years of prosecution. The seat filled in week 10, inside the six-to-12 week window. Offer to signature on that file was 9 working days. The delay was the first month spent on the wrong cell.
An apparel head of legal posted “IP counsel” and interviewed patent prosecutors for eleven weeks, the full length of the New York associate timeline. The book was clearance, office actions, and a small TTAB opposition docket. The company then hired a counsel from a trademark boutique at a NALP-small-firm IP analogue, not lockstep. A software-platform head of legal insisted on patent registration for a brand-enforcement seat that would never file a patent. That file is the one withdrawn file in the 11. The company kept the outside panel and did not fill an internal seat.
Direct testimony inside the same cohort is blunt. The consumer-products general counsel said the Expert Attorney band was what finance would sign, and that they had not been told the lockstep fourth-year sat above it. The apparel head of legal said the posting had been copied from an older intellectual-property requisition. A trademark-group chair at a large IP firm, speaking about the earner side, said in-house ranges built on Attorney or Expert Attorney medians were the reason mid-level prosecutors stopped taking corporate calls. One of 11 files died on a credential the statute does not require.
There is no trademark bar. There are three seats.
The credential is the state bar. The hiring error is treating a patent register, a grandfathered agent class, or a lumped IP title as a substitute for that gate.
USPTO guidance on becoming a trademark practitioner is the opposite of the patent gate. Any active member in good standing of the highest court of a U.S. state, the District of Columbia, a commonwealth, or a territory may represent others before the Office in trademark matters. Attorneys are not required to apply for registration or recognition. 37 C.F.R. § 11.14(a) states that registration as a patent practitioner does not itself entitle an individual to practice before the Office in trademark matters. Section 11.14(b) does not recognize non-lawyers except agents recognized before January 1, 1957. There is no live U.S. trademark-agent hiring class for a 2026 associate or in-house seat, and a trademark lawyer salary conversation that starts from that secondary string is priced for a job that does not exist.
Foreign-domiciled owners remain a structural buyer of U.S. firm time. The Federal Register final rule of July 2, 2019, effective August 3, 2019, still requires a U.S.-licensed attorney qualified under § 11.14. Reciprocal foreign recognition under § 11.14(c) still requires a qualified U.S. attorney to file and receive correspondence. Non-resident filing at the U.S. office is that rule in volume, not a reason to staff the seat with a patent agent.
The USPTO Law School Clinic Certification Program lists more than 70 participating clinics; the 2026–2027 expansion window runs through April 30, 2027. Limited recognition lets students practice under a faculty supervisor. It is not an alternative to bar admission for a paid 2026 seat. Typical examining-attorney time from job-opportunity announcement to offer is about 18 weeks. Fiscal 2026 plans to hire 75 trademark examiners against 48 expected attritions. FY 2025 welcomed one class of 59 new hires, three return hires, and 23 internal reassignments into examining-attorney seats. Those are public-body facts. They do not price in-house Trademark Counsel and they do not price a lockstep associate.
Who may appearWho the company should not hire for this book
- State-bar attorney The only live U.S. class for USPTO trademark matters. In-house counsel of record and firm counsel of record both sit here.
- Patent practitioner A different register. The regulation says that registration does not itself authorize trademark practice.
- Trademark agent A pre-1957 grandfather, not a 2026 associate or in-house requisition. Reciprocal foreign agents still need U.S. counsel of record.
The three paid seats a general counsel actually meets are in-house Trademark Counsel, firm trademark associate or counsel, and the USPTO examining attorney. CBP’s Intellectual Property Enforcement Branch and the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board are adjacent public desks, not substitutes for the brand seat on the company payroll. Section 337 at the International Trade Commission will take a trademark assertion; it is not where a cosmetics or apparel chief legal officer should look for a prosecutor.
| Seat | Who pays | Credential gate | Public cash cell |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-house Trademark Counsel | Brand-owning company (CPG, luxury, tech, pharma, media); reports inside Legal to the general counsel or a head of IP | J.D. and an active U.S. state bar; no patent registration | ACC title band (no trademark row) |
| Firm trademark associate or counsel | Boutique, large IP firm Brand Management group, or Am Law litigation shop buying Lanham Act / TTAB time | Active U.S. state bar; 37 C.F.R. § 11.14. Patent registration does not authorize the work | Class-year lockstep at matching firms; NALP IP cell at smaller offices |
| USPTO trademark examining attorney | Federal Office of the Commissioner for Trademarks; Alexandria headquarters | J.D.; U.S. citizen or national; active bar for GS-11; GS-12/13/14 reserved for former examining attorneys | OPM General Schedule, Washington-Baltimore-Arlington locality |
Trademark pay: questions from the lawyer and the general counsel
What is a trademark attorney salary in 2026?
There is no single 2026 figure: dated public cells run from $85,447 on the GS-11 examining floor to $455,000 on the lockstep eighth-year base. NALP’s intellectual-property first-year median as of January 1, 2025 was $225,000, and that cell still mixes patent with trademark. Association of Corporate Counsel’s 2025 survey, data effective March 1, 2025, puts Expert Attorney median base at $227,000 with no trademark row. A general counsel posting a range should name which cell it is using. A lawyer reading a posting should ask the same question before treating the number as a market.
How much does in-house trademark counsel earn versus a lockstep associate?
Association of Corporate Counsel’s 2025 survey puts Attorney median base at $148,000 and Expert Attorney at $227,000; the 2026 lockstep first-year base is $235,000 from July 1. Those are different products. The in-house number is a title band across every practice a legal department employs. The lockstep number is a class-year base at matching firms, paid the same to a trademark associate as to a corporate or litigation associate of that year. A mid-level lockstep trademark associate on the 2026 scale prints $320,000 in year four and $385,000 in year five — above the Expert Attorney median a company often treats as “senior.”
Is there a U.S. trademark agent salary in 2026?
No. The only surviving U.S. trademark-agent class is a pre-1957 grandfather under 37 C.F.R. § 11.14(b). Patent-agent registration does not authorize trademark practice. Foreign reciprocal recognition still requires a qualified U.S. attorney to file and receive correspondence. The secondary search string does not map onto a 2026 associate or in-house seat; a general counsel should not budget a “trademark agent” line for this work.
Should a general counsel price a brand seat off patent-attorney pay?
No. U.S. district courts filed 4,217 trademark cases against 4,422 patent cases in the year ending September 30, 2025, per Administrative Office Table C-7. Filing volume is in the same order of magnitude. USPTO economics are not: FY 2025 patent earned revenue was $3,856.4 million against $566.8 million for trademarks, and patent examiners outnumbered trademark examining attorneys 9,086 to 810. Patent pay cells describe a different credential, a different docket, and a different agency P&L.
How long does a New York trademark associate search take?
Budget six to 12 weeks on Sartori’s New York associate line, with a median 11 working days from offer to signature and a 93 percent completion rate on 33 closed files over three years. The clock that slips is the one spent on a specification that asks for USPTO patent registration. Three of 11 trademark-adjacent files in that New York book opened with a patent credential the trademark desk does not use; one of those 11 was withdrawn when the company would not drop it.
Do USPTO trademark examining attorneys earn the lockstep?
No. GS-14 step 10 on the January 2026 Washington-Baltimore-Arlington table is $187,093, below the $235,000 lockstep first-year. Examining attorneys start at GS-9 or GS-11 and progress through GS-12, GS-13 and GS-14. Production bonuses exist and are not published as a dollar schedule, so they are not added here. The public seat is a General Schedule job in Alexandria, not a lockstep associate and not in-house brand counsel.
NALP tables, OPM locality rates, USPTO reports, ACC title bands, and the New York associate program.
Office-reported bases, General Schedule locality rates, agency financials, and Board and docket counts are public. Reachability, specification failure, and offer windows are the New York associate program. No trademark-only national median is in that mix, because none is published.
NALP, OPM, USPTO, courts, ACC, and the New York research program
54 references- Sartori & Partners — New York Legal Talent Research Programme (1,675 structured interviews; ~67,000 lawyers mapped; quarterly surveys since 2019; mandate telemetry) sartoriglobal.com ↗
- Despite Expectations, $225,000 Entry Associate Salaries Lag at Large Law Firms nalp.org ↗
- 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey Special Report to Survey Participants nalp.org ↗
- $225,000 Entry-Level Salaries Not Yet the Standard at Large Firms nalp.org ↗
- Milbank bumps associate pay to $235k as McDermott becomes first firm to match legalbusiness.co.uk ↗
- ALERT: Milbank Does It Again — Associate Salaries Are Going Up!!! abovethelaw.com ↗
- Biglaw Salary Scale + Bonuses (1968 - 2026) biglawinvestor.com ↗
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- Become a trademark examining attorney uspto.gov ↗
- FY 2025 AGENCY FINANCIAL REPORT uspto.gov ↗
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- Budget and financial information uspto.gov ↗
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- Reducing trademark pendency, improving processing uspto.gov ↗
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- Trademark processing wait times uspto.gov ↗
- TTAB Incoming Filings and Performance Measures for Decisions uspto.gov ↗
- USPTO fee schedule uspto.gov ↗
- Trademark fee information uspto.gov ↗
- Table C-7 U.S. District Courts—Intellectual Property Cases … September 30, 2025 uscourts.gov ↗
- Table 4.7 Intellectual Property Rights Cases Filed … 1990–2025 uscourts.gov ↗
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- World Intellectual Property Indicators: Global Patent and Design Filings Reach New Records in 2024, Trademarks Flat wipo.int ↗
- Intellectual Property Rights Seizure Statistics Fiscal Year 2025 cbp.gov ↗
- 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey Executive Summary acc.com ↗
- Table 1. National employment and wage data … May 2025 bls.gov ↗
- 37 CFR § 11.14 Individuals who may practice before the Office in trademark and other non-patent matters ecfr.gov ↗
- 37 CFR § 2.11 Requirement for representation ecfr.gov ↗
- Requirement of U.S. Licensed Attorney for Foreign Trademark Applicants and Registrants federalregister.gov ↗
- Becoming a trademark practitioner uspto.gov ↗
- Hiring a U.S.-licensed attorney uspto.gov ↗
- Experienced practitioners: Representation, signatures, and ethics in trademark cases uspto.gov ↗
- Experienced practitioners: Trademark ex parte expungement and reexamination proceedings uspto.gov ↗
- USPTO Hour March 25, 2026 uspto.gov ↗
- USPTO implements the Trademark Modernization Act uspto.gov ↗
- USPTO has terminated more than 52,000 fraudulently filed trademark applications and registrations uspto.gov ↗
- Fighting fraud: USPTO targets 10,500+ invalid trademark filings uspto.gov ↗
- Now open: trademark examining attorney role at USPTO uspto.gov ↗
- Search Jobs - Corporate Functions: Legal jobs.apple.com ↗
- Trademarks: non-contentious (including prosecution, portfolio management and licensing) legal500.com ↗
- Trademarks: litigation legal500.com ↗
- About INTA inta.org ↗
- 21-1043 Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. (06/29/2023) supremecourt.gov ↗
- Tenth Circuit Abitron remand (April 23, 2024) ca10.uscourts.gov ↗
- 22-148 Jack Daniel's Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC (06/08/2023) supremecourt.gov ↗
- VIP Products LLC v. Jack Daniel's Properties Inc. loeb.com ↗
- 22-704 Vidal v. Elster (06/13/2024) supremecourt.gov ↗
- Sunkist Growers, Inc. v. Intrastate Distributors, Inc. (July 23, 2025) cafc.uscourts.gov ↗
- Attorney-Advisor (GS-0905-11/14) … 2024 Job Announcement citba.org ↗
- About Section 337 usitc.gov ↗
- Suspending Duty-Free De Minimis Treatment for All Countries whitehouse.gov ↗
- Axle of Dearborn, Inc. v. Department of Commerce (August 13, 2026) cit.uscourts.gov ↗
- 2025 Report of the Economic Survey aipla.org ↗
- Law School Clinic Certification Program uspto.gov ↗
NALP medians are office-reported bases as of January 1, 2025, including a lumped intellectual-property cut. Lockstep figures are the July 1, 2026 class-year scale as reported by Legal Business, Above the Law, and Biglaw Investor. GS figures are OPM Salary Table 2026-DCB. USPTO class counts, examining-attorney headcount, earned revenue, pendency, TMA, Register Protection Office, and TTAB series are agency publications. District-court filings are Administrative Office Tables C-7 and 4.7 for the year ending September 30, 2025. ACC title medians are the 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey, data effective March 1, 2025; that survey has no trademark row. WIPO figures are calendar 2024 and are not subtracted from USPTO fiscal 2025.
Sartori maps lawyer coverage globally at about 1.5 million profiles and has run quarterly market surveys since 2019. Google Ads Keyword Planner, measured September 11, 2026 across four countries, recorded 140 monthly searches for the string this page answers. The class-year lockstep lives on the 2026 BigLaw associate salary scale. Department-wide in-house title context lives on the 2026 in-house salary map. The firm-to-company trade lives on the private practice versus in-house salary guide. Patent-attorney pay is a sibling brief, not this table. For how the corporate desk runs a mandate, see in-house counsel recruiting and associate recruiting.
BigLaw Associate Salary Scale 2026
The class-year lockstep a trademark associate at a matching firm actually takes home — the practice-blind ladder this page refuses to relabel as trademark pay.
See the 2026 lockstepIn-House Counsel Salary 2026
Title bands a general counsel uses for the rest of the legal department. This page explains why those bands are not a trademark cell.
View in-house rangesPrivate Practice vs In-House Salary Guide
The trade a lawyer makes when leaving a firm lockstep for a corporate seat — context for the two readers this trademark table serves.
Compare the two tracksA quiet conversation
Pricing the brand seat — or rewriting the specification?
We run New York associate searches for general counsel and heads of legal who need trademark, brand, or copyright counsel on the payroll, and we are willing to say the cell on the requisition is wrong before we open the search. Confidential, no obligation.