How to Trademark a Game Name: 5 Steps + Cost (2026)

Your brand is one of your most valuable assets in games. If you’re publishing your own video game or board game, one of the most important steps you can take is to protect the game’s name.

In this post, I’ll show you how you can trademark your game, step by step. We do this to stop infringement and make sure you’re not infringing on someone else’s trademark.

With a trademark registration for your game’s name, you should feel more confident in releasing your game in this crowded industry.

Game trademarks explained: what are they?

What is a trademark?

Trademarks are basically any word, slogan, or image that identifies the source of goods or services. A brand, essentially.

In the context of game trademark, it can be anything from:

• the game’s name,
• the game’s logo,
• the game developer or publisher’s name or logo, or
• the game’s slogan or tagline.

Here’s some examples you might recognize as famous video game trademarks:

These are game names (Activision’s “Call of Duty” games), logos (Microsoft’s Xbox “X” logo), and slogans (Nintendo’s “Now You’re Playing With Power”).

All of them are powerful game trademarks.

The same applies to board games and card games, as well.

For example, HASBRO and MONOPOLY are very strong tabletop game brands (which are used in both board games AND video games). Even on a smaller scale than mass market board games, brands like Scythe, Unmatched, and Dominion are strong and distinctive. When you see those names, you know what you’re getting: a quality game!

Here’s another one, from Sony:

How to trademark a game: the name, the company, or the logo

While filing a trademark application is, on the surface, kind of simple, there are actually a lot of steps involved to do it right.

If you jump into it without doing things the right way and following all the steps, you may end up making some serious mistakes that can lead to losing the registration. Then, you’ve wasted money, time, and potentially lost the right to use the trademark you wanted.

So I don’t recommend skipping steps here and rushing things.

Honestly, I recommend that you get professional help. A video game attorney like myself who has filed hundreds of these game trademark applications can help you through the process and get it done with less stress, less wasted time, and less mistakes.

Step 1: brainstorming a strong trademark

The first step to trademarking a game is coming up with the trademark itself. However, I find it’s best not to stop with your first “perfect” idea. Often this will end up blocked by an existing trademark registration.

Instead, I usually suggest that clients have at least 5 ideas. List them in order of preference and start the next step.

Step 2: the trademark clearance search

Once you’ve got your list of potential trademarks, you need to run a video game trademark search to “clear” your mark against existing trademarks. This is as much an art as it is a science. Many potential conflicts that my clients dismiss as no problem will actually stop a registration.

You need to search:

• registered trademarks (on the TESS search engine on uspto.gov for US, and on the WIPO global brand database for international), and
• unregistered trademarks which may have common law rights

These common law trademark rights begin once someone has started using the name in commerce in connection with their goods and services, at least in the US. So they may be able to sue you for infringement, even without a registration.

For this reason, the search needs to be broader than you might think.

In my practice, I use a combination of a clearance search service for registered US and international marks, and manual searching of different databases (sites like Steam and itch.io for video games, and Board Game Geek for board games). This provides as comprehensive of a search as you’re going to get.

Here’s an example of the search results from the service I use, TMTKO. Looks like trying to register a trademark for CALL OF DUTY would be a bad idea!

Step 3: filing the application

Once you’ve completed the clearance search and finalized your choice, the next step is to file your trademark application with the USPTO.

It’s a bit complicated, only because there is a lot of jargon in there. Many people who file these themselves get tripped up on things like choosing the proper basis for their application, what date to put as the date of first use, and submitting the proper specimen showing proof of use.

If you manage to make it through the application correctly, then it’s time to move on to the next (and longest) step: the wait.

Step 4: the long wait

It used to be that the USPTO would review a trademark application within 2-3 months. However, since 2020 this wait time has stretched to around 8 months.

So while your rights will always stretch back to the date of first use or the date you filed (for intent to use applications), there is a long wait until you know whether it will pass their examination.

After that initial examination, there’s a 30 day publication period where anyone who wants to oppose the registration can do so. If your trademark makes it through that, it’ll be a couple more months before it is registered or, in the case of intent to use applications, given a Notice of Approval pending evidence of use in commerce.

Congrats!

Step 5: registration

Once your trademark is registered, you are expected to police and enforce the mark against infringement. Without this, you might lose your rights.

Also, there are ongoing maintenance filings after the 5th year, 10th year, and every 10 years after that. You’ll have to provide evidence that you’re still using the trademark, but the good news is that your rights can go on forever as long as you’re still doing so.

Which trademark class does your game fall under?

Before you file, you need to know which class your game goes in. The USPTO sorts every trademark into numbered classes based on what you’re actually selling, and games can touch three of them:

• Class 9 covers downloadable and recorded software, which is where most video games live.
• Class 28 covers physical games: board games, card games, tabletop games, and toys.
• Class 41 covers entertainment services, like an online game you host and operate rather than sell as a download.

Picking the wrong class is one of the most common mistakes I see in DIY filings. If you sell a board game and a video game adaptation, that’s two classes, and you pay the filing fee for each one. A digital game you also run as a live service might need both Class 9 and Class 41. Get this wrong and your registration may not actually cover the thing you’re selling.

How much does it cost to trademark a game?

The base USPTO filing fee is $350 per class, as of the fee changes that took effect in January 2025. That’s the government fee, not an attorney’s fee, and it’s charged per class: one class runs $350, two classes runs $700, and so on.

A few things can push that number up. The USPTO now adds a surcharge if your application is missing required information ($100 per class), and another if you write a custom, free-form description of your goods instead of choosing from their pre-approved list. So a rushed DIY application can quietly cost more than a clean one.

Then there’s the attorney fee on top, if you hire someone like me to run the clearance search and file it correctly. I think my fee is reasonable for what it saves you: a rejected application, a wasted filing fee, and months of lost time. The filing fee is non-refundable, so if the USPTO rejects your mark, that $350 doesn’t come back.

Trademark vs. copyright: which does your game need?

People mix these up constantly, so here’s the short version: a trademark protects your game’s brand, and a copyright protects your game’s creative content.

Your trademark is the name, the logo, and the slogan, the stuff that tells players “this is a game from your studio.” Your copyright is the art, the music, the written story, and the code. They do different jobs, and most game developers actually need both.

If someone releases a knockoff with a confusingly similar name, that’s a trademark problem. If someone copies your actual artwork or rips your soundtrack, that’s a copyright problem. I break down the copyright side in my guide on whether board games are copyrighted, and the same principles apply to video games.

Wrapping it up: I’m here to help get your game trademark!

So that’s the process for how to trademark a game! It can be a bit daunting, but it is doable.

However, I recommend that you use a lawyer (maybe your favorite video game attorney) to do the clearance and filing on your behalf. This can help to avoid tons of potential issues that can pop up through the process.

If you want some help with your trademark, just jump over to my contact page to set up a consultation to discuss your video game intellectual property and other issues.

Want to know more about video game trademark? Check out my post (and free eBook version) here!