Registering your business name with your state, for example as an LLC, does not give you national rights to that name. A federal trademark from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) does. We counted every U.S. trademark application filed from 2015 through 2023 in the USPTO’s research dataset, then compared applicants’ home states with the number of business locations in each state.
Key findings
- U.S.-based applicants filed about 353,000 trademark applications in 2023. That was down from a peak of about 419,000 in 2020 but still 16% above 2015.
- Main Street filings kept growing after the pandemic peak. Applications covering construction, repair and cleaning services (Class 37) rose every year, from 6,875 in 2015 to 10,722 in 2023, an increase of 56%.
- Restaurant and lodging applications (Class 43) rose from 11,163 in 2015 to 13,746 in 2023. Applications for beauty, salon and health services (Class 44) peaked at 18,061 in 2021 and fell to 15,536 in 2023.
- Across the U.S., applicants filed about 423 trademark applications for every 10,000 business locations in 2023. Among the larger states, California (642), Florida (546) and New York (543) ranked highest, and West Virginia (107) ranked lowest.
- Delaware and Wyoming had the highest rates by far. That probably says more about where companies list their legal address than about where they actually operate.
- About 38% of applications filed in 2021 had been abandoned by early 2024, and about 46% had been registered. Construction and repair applications did better than average: 54% were registered.
Trademark applications by state, 2023
“Main Street” counts applications covering restaurants and lodging (Class 43), beauty and health services (Class 44) or construction, repair and cleaning (Class 37). Business locations are 2023 County Business Patterns establishments.
A trademark protects your brand name, while forming a business entity is a separate step; our guide to how much an LLC costs and our LLC cost by state table show what that step runs in each state.
| State | Applications (2023) | Per 10,000 business locations | Main Street applications | Main Street per 10,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delaware | 5,656 | 1904 | 361 | 122 |
| Wyoming | 3,881 | 1626 | 120 | 50 |
| District of Columbia | 2,212 | 929 | 187 | 79 |
| Nevada | 6,271 | 811 | 617 | 80 |
| California | 66,058 | 642 | 5,948 | 58 |
| Florida | 35,238 | 546 | 4,300 | 67 |
| Utah | 5,207 | 545 | 559 | 59 |
| New York | 29,377 | 543 | 2,873 | 53 |
| New Jersey | 11,873 | 499 | 1,169 | 49 |
| Georgia | 12,101 | 463 | 1,399 | 54 |
| Arizona | 7,483 | 460 | 974 | 60 |
| Texas | 29,654 | 442 | 3,983 | 59 |
| Colorado | 8,018 | 439 | 953 | 52 |
| Maryland | 5,993 | 419 | 826 | 58 |
| Connecticut | 3,732 | 418 | 396 | 44 |
| Massachusetts | 7,600 | 414 | 858 | 47 |
| Tennessee | 5,874 | 391 | 851 | 57 |
| Virginia | 7,622 | 362 | 944 | 45 |
| Illinois | 11,446 | 355 | 1,374 | 43 |
| Washington | 6,959 | 344 | 843 | 42 |
| North Carolina | 8,472 | 328 | 1,108 | 43 |
| Ohio | 8,299 | 325 | 826 | 32 |
| Rhode Island | 948 | 321 | 127 | 43 |
| New Mexico | 1,430 | 319 | 143 | 32 |
| Minnesota | 4,819 | 312 | 458 | 30 |
| Michigan | 7,089 | 309 | 832 | 36 |
| South Carolina | 3,771 | 307 | 440 | 36 |
| New Hampshire | 1,176 | 299 | 149 | 38 |
| Pennsylvania | 9,173 | 299 | 1,074 | 35 |
| Hawaii | 971 | 295 | 115 | 35 |
| Idaho | 1,579 | 272 | 156 | 27 |
| Oregon | 3,311 | 270 | 318 | 26 |
| Missouri | 3,901 | 258 | 511 | 34 |
| Indiana | 3,887 | 250 | 441 | 28 |
| Wisconsin | 3,451 | 238 | 395 | 27 |
| Vermont | 482 | 231 | 51 | 24 |
| Kentucky | 2,157 | 228 | 293 | 31 |
| Alabama | 2,372 | 224 | 279 | 26 |
| Montana | 931 | 219 | 109 | 26 |
| Louisiana | 2,261 | 208 | 286 | 26 |
| Kansas | 1,552 | 204 | 190 | 25 |
| Arkansas | 1,410 | 200 | 148 | 21 |
| Maine | 864 | 199 | 112 | 26 |
| Nebraska | 1,113 | 197 | 157 | 28 |
| Iowa | 1,620 | 194 | 198 | 24 |
| Oklahoma | 1,747 | 181 | 216 | 22 |
| South Dakota | 481 | 165 | 55 | 19 |
| Mississippi | 917 | 152 | 116 | 19 |
| Alaska | 318 | 143 | 30 | 14 |
| North Dakota | 317 | 125 | 42 | 17 |
| West Virginia | 382 | 107 | 63 | 18 |
How we did it and limitations
- Source: the USPTO Trademark Case File Dataset (2023 release, data through the end of 2023), downloaded from the USPTO Open Data Portal. We counted applications by filing date and assigned each to the state of the first-listed original applicant. Madrid Protocol extensions are excluded.
- An applicant’s address may be a registered agent or headquarters, not the place where the business operates. This inflates the numbers for Delaware, Wyoming and D.C.
- One application can cover several classes, so the class totals overlap.
- Some applications filed in 2021 were still pending when the data was frozen, so the final abandonment and registration rates will be a little different.
- This 2023 release is the newest research dataset. It predates the January 18, 2025 fee change, which replaced the $250 and $350 filing options with a single $350-per-class base fee plus surcharges. We make no claims here about how the fee change affected filings.
- The business location counts are a yardstick only. Many applicants are individuals or online sellers with no physical storefront.
Related: LLC vs. corporation.
Sources
- USPTO, Trademark Case File Dataset (TRCFECO2), 2023 release
- USPTO, Summary of 2025 trademark fee changes
- U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023