Trademark Classes (the Nice Classification), Explained for Founders

Trademark classes are the 45 categories of the Nice Classification, the international system used by the USPTO to organize every trademark on file. Classes 1–34 cover goods— physical products — and classes 35–45 cover services. You don’t own a name everywhere; you own it in the specific classes that match what you actually sell, which is why the same word can belong to two different companies at once.

Getting your class right is one of the least glamorous and most consequential decisions in naming. It sets the scope of your trademark search, it determines what you’re actually protected against, and it controls your filing fees. Pick the wrong class and you can pay for a registration that doesn’t cover your real business. Here’s how the system works, in plain language.

What is the Nice Classification?

The Nice Classification is the international standard that sorts all trademarks into 45 numbered classes. It’s administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization under the Nice Agreement and is used by the USPTO and trademark offices in most countries, which is why a class number means roughly the same thing whether you file in the United States or abroad. The list is revised periodically as new types of goods and services appear, but the 45-class structure has held for decades.

What’s the difference between goods classes and service classes?

Classes 1 through 34 are for goods and classes 35 through 45 are for services. Goods are physical things you make or sell — chemicals (class 1), cosmetics (class 3), clothing (class 25), coffee and tea (class 30). Services are things you do for customers — advertising and retail (class 35), financial services (class 36), telecommunications (class 38), software development (class 42), legal and security services (class 45). A single brand often lands in both buckets: a clothing label that also runs an online store sells goods in class 25 and a retail service in class 35.

Why can two companies have the same name?

Because trademark rights are granted per class, the same word can be registered by unrelated owners when there’s no likelihood of confusion. The textbook example: the same name can be a well-known airline in one class and a faucet-and-fixtures brand in another, and both coexist peacefully because nobody books a flight expecting a kitchen tap. The law doesn’t protect a string of letters in the abstract — it protects a name within a market, for the goods or services where confusion could realistically happen.

What class is my trademark?

Your class is decided by what you actually sell, not by what your name sounds like. Work from your real offering: a roaster selling bags of beans is in class 30; a café serving drinks is in class 43; a software product is in class 9 or 42 depending on whether it’s sold as a downloadable product or provided as a service. The USPTO maintains a free Trademark ID Manualof pre-approved descriptions that each map to a class, which is the most reliable place to find where your goods or services belong. When a business spans several classes — as most do — mapping each revenue line to its class is exactly the kind of judgment a trademark attorney is worth paying for.

How does class choice affect your search and your fees?

Class choice changes two things at once. First, it scopes your knockout search: a meaningful conflict is a confusingly similar mark in your class (and closely related classes), not an identical name in some unrelated corner of the register. Searching the wrong class either misses real conflicts or drowns you in irrelevant ones. Second, USPTO filing fees are charged per class, so a name covering three classes costs roughly three filing fees, not one. The instinct to “file in every class to be safe” gets expensive fast — and the USPTO requires a genuine intent to use the mark in each class you claim.

What’s the most common mistake founders make with classes?

The most common mistake is choosing a class based on the brand’s vibe instead of its actual goods or services — or filing in one class and assuming it covers everything the company does. A founder who registers a name for the app (a service) but not the branded merchandise (goods) has left a gap a competitor can walk through. The fix is boring but reliable: list every way the business makes money, map each to its Nice class, and confirm the scope before you file. Remember that this article is research, not legal advice; a registration strategy is a legal judgment best confirmed with a trademark attorney.

How Brand Cleared handles classes for you

Class selection is built into the clearance step, not left to guesswork. When Brand Cleared runs its USPTO federal knockout search on a candidate name, it scopes that search to the relevant Nice classfor your goods or services — so the conflicts it surfaces are the ones that actually matter for your business, not noise from unrelated classes. It does the mechanical class-scoping and searching across roughly 100 candidate names in 10 to 15 minutes, so you and your attorney can spend your time on the finalist instead of the spreadsheet.

Clear your name in the right class — start free →

Frequently asked questions