Built for the way Austin builds brands
Austin builds brands faster than most cities can keep up with. Downtown and the Domain anchor the SaaS, fintech, and enterprise software scene. East Austin runs the food trucks, breweries, coffee roasters, and independent restaurants that define the city’s F&B identity. South Congress and South Lamar are the home base for retail, hospitality, and lifestyle brands. The music corridor along Red River and Sixth Street, plus the SXSW orbit, keeps producing labels, festivals, and artist-run businesses. And Round Rock, Cedar Park, and the broader Austin metro have become a magnet for relocated tech founders, creator economy businesses, and DTC brands.
Every one of those founders eventually faces the same federal hurdle. Your name, your logo, and your creative work need real protection, and the USPTO does not care which neighborhood or block you launched on. We help Austin brand owners file trademarks, register copyrights, and build IP portfolios that hold up when the market gets crowded. Flat fees. Plain language. A process built for founders who do not have time for billable-hour roulette.
Why Austin brands call us
Austin has plenty of capable IP firms, and most of them are tied up with the bigger tech portfolios that have moved into town over the last five years. That is real work, but it is not the kind of practical, founder-friendly trademark work a growing brand actually needs. Most of those firms also bill hourly, charge for every email, and quote retainers that are out of reach for an East Austin food truck or a two-person SaaS startup north of the river.
We are different by design. Single point of contact means you talk to the attorney working on your file, not a paralegal four steps removed. Flat-fee pricing means you know the total cost before you sign. ID Manual first means we use pre-approved USPTO descriptions to keep your government fees at the lowest tier. And fully remote means an East Austin founder, a Domain startup, and a Dripping Springs brand all get the same treatment, on the same timeline, without ever booking a conference room.
Who we help in Austin
We work with brand owners across the city’s most active categories. Below are the most common engagements. If your situation is not listed, it is probably still a fit. See all who we help.
Scaling Brands
Austin food, beverage, and lifestyle brands hitting growth where the gaps in their IP show up. Multi-class filings, monitoring, and international expansion strategy.
Startups
Downtown, Domain, and East Austin founders locking down product names and logos before fundraising or launch. Intent-to-Use filings welcome.
Fintech Startups
Downtown and Domain fintech founders protecting product names, logos, and trade dress in one of the most aggressively-filed categories in the USPTO.
Small Businesses
Restaurants, food trucks, breweries, boutique fitness, and service businesses across the Austin metro protecting concept names, taglines, and signature offerings.
Artists & Designers
Independent artists, musicians, and design studios in East Austin, South Congress, and the Eastside registering copyrights and protecting visual marks.
Authors & Writers
Books, podcasts, newsletters, and serialized written work. Copyright registration plus series-name and pen-name trademark protection.
Services for Austin clients
Most Austin engagements start with one of the five services below. Tech and SaaS startups tend to start with clearance and Intent-to-Use filings. Food, beverage, and music brands often need multi-class strategy. Studios and creators usually start with copyright work. We scope and price every service up front, before any work starts. See all trademark services or see all copyright services.
The process
Our part of the process takes about 7 to 10 days from intake to USPTO submission. From there, the USPTO controls the timeline. As of 2026, expect 8 to 14 months from filing to a registration certificate, assuming no substantive issues.
Strategy call
A 30-minute call to understand your brand, your goods and services, and your timeline. We confirm scope and flat-fee pricing before any work starts.
Clearance search
A Go/No-Go search across federal, state, and common-law sources. You receive a written report explaining risk level and recommended next steps.
Class and description selection
We map your business to the right USPTO classes using ID Manual descriptions. The lowest-fee, lowest-friction path through the application. Read more in our breakdown of why the ID Manual matters.
Application drafted and filed
We draft your application, walk you through it for sign-off, and submit it directly to the USPTO. You receive your serial number the same day.
Examination and publication
8 to 10 months later, your application is reviewed by a USPTO examiner. If approved, it is published in the Official Gazette for a 30-day opposition period.
Registration
If no one opposes, the USPTO issues your registration certificate. Your trademark is enforceable nationwide for 10 years, renewable for as long as you use it in commerce.
Flat-fee pricing
Trademark filing should not be a surprise bill. Below is the most common engagement, a single-class federal trademark application. Multi-class filings (common for food, beverage, and consumer brands), copyright registrations, and complex matters are quoted up front before any work begins.
Note: USPTO government filing fees ($350 per class as of 2026) are billed separately and paid directly to the USPTO at the time of filing. Custom descriptions outside the ID Manual incur a $200 per class USPTO surcharge. We use ID Manual descriptions wherever possible to keep your fees at the lowest tier.
Austin FAQs
The questions we hear most from Austin founders before they engage. Do not see yours? Send it over. We will answer it on the consultation call.
No. Trademarks and copyrights are governed by federal law. The USPTO and the U.S. Copyright Office have nationwide jurisdiction, and any U.S.-licensed attorney can represent you on a federal filing regardless of which state either of you is in. We work with Austin clients entirely remotely. Video consultations, electronic signatures, and email-based status updates.
Texas offers state-level trademark registration through the Secretary of State, but it only protects you within Texas. Most Austin businesses sell beyond state lines, whether on Shopify, in wholesale, on Amazon, or to out-of-state customers. For almost every brand we work with, a federal USPTO registration is the right choice because it gives you nationwide protection. We will walk through whether state registration makes sense for your specific situation on the consultation call.
Not at all. Whether you are in East Austin, South Congress, the Domain, downtown, Round Rock, Cedar Park, Pflugerville, Georgetown, San Marcos, or Dripping Springs, the federal trademark process is identical. We work with founders and businesses across the Austin metro the same way. We also work with clients in San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, and across Texas. Remote consultations, electronic filings, and a single point of contact.
Yes, and you probably should, especially in Austin where competition for tech and consumer brand names is fierce. A Section 1(b) Intent-to-Use application lets you reserve your trademark with the USPTO before you have a single sale. You lock in a priority date today, which means anyone who tries to use a similar name after that date is standing behind you in line. We file ITU applications regularly for Austin founders who are still in development, beta, or pre-launch. Read more in our guide to ITU applications.
It depends on what you actually sell and where you sell it. Restaurants and food trucks usually file in Class 43 (restaurant services). Packaged food brands typically need Class 29 or 30 (depending on the product), and Class 35 if there is a retail or e-commerce component. Beverage brands often need Class 32 (non-alcoholic) or Class 33 (wine and spirits), plus Class 35 for online sales. Filing in the wrong classes leaves you exposed; filing in too many wastes money on classes you cannot defend. The ID Manual strategy on the consultation call is where we sort this out.
Our part, from intake to USPTO submission, takes about 7 to 10 days. After that, the USPTO controls the timeline. As of 2026, expect 8 to 10 months to first examination, another month or two for publication and opposition, and then registration. Total: typically 10 to 14 months from filing to a registration certificate, assuming no substantive issues.
Yes. We help Austin brand owners respond to infringement on three fronts: trademark side, with cease and desist letters and ongoing monitoring; copyright side, with DMCA takedowns and infringement response; and pre-emptive, by filing the right marks in the right classes before the copying starts. Amazon Brand Registry in particular requires a registered trademark, which is why we hear this question a lot from Austin DTC and consumer brands. The fastest action depends on what you have already registered, so the consultation call usually starts there.