Built for the way Boston builds brands
Boston is one of the most research-dense cities in the world. Kendall Square is the global center of biotech and life sciences. The Seaport is home to the city’s SaaS, fintech, and AI scale-ups. Back Bay and the Financial District anchor the established corporate and agency layer. Cambridge runs on the orbit of Harvard, MIT, and the spinouts they keep producing. Somerville, Allston, and Jamaica Plain are full of independent designers, breweries, restaurants, and creative studios. And the Boston startup network running through MassChallenge, Greentown Labs, and the MIT Sandbox keeps producing new product names that need protecting before the next milestone.
Every one of those founders eventually faces the same federal hurdle. Your name, your logo, your codebase, and your research outputs need real protection, and the USPTO does not care which side of the Charles you launched on. We help Greater Boston founders file trademarks, register copyrights, and build IP portfolios that hold up when the category gets crowded. Flat fees. Plain language. A process built for founders who have better things to do than chase legal invoices.
Why Boston founders call us
Boston has some of the most respected IP firms in the country. They are excellent at biotech patent prosecution, complex licensing, and Fortune 500 portfolio work. They are also expensive, hourly, and not particularly built for the kind of practical, founder-friendly trademark work a small or growing brand actually needs. Trademarks tend to be the side dish next to the main patent course.
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 a Kendall Square biotech founder, a Seaport SaaS team, and a Cambridge spinout all get the same treatment, on the same timeline, without any office tourism.
Who we help in Boston
We work with brand owners across Greater Boston’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.
Startups
MassChallenge, Techstars, MIT Sandbox, and Cambridge Innovation Center founders locking down product and company names before fundraising or launch.
Scaling Brands
Series A and beyond Boston companies hitting growth where the gaps in their IP show up. Multi-class filings, monitoring, and international expansion strategy.
Developers & Software Creators
Indie developers and small SaaS teams across the Boston tech corridor protecting product names, logos, app icons, and source code as creative works.
Fintech Startups
Financial District and Seaport fintech founders protecting product names, logos, and trade dress in one of the most aggressively-filed categories in the USPTO.
Small Businesses
Restaurants, breweries, retail, fitness, and service businesses across Greater Boston protecting concept names, taglines, and signature offerings.
Authors & Writers
Academic authors, researchers, journalists, and indie publishers across Boston’s deep university and writing community.
Services for Boston clients
Most Boston engagements start with one of the five services below. Biotech and SaaS startups tend to start with clearance and standard filing. Researchers and authors often 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 product or service 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, 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.
Boston FAQs
The questions we hear most from Boston 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 Boston clients entirely remotely. Video consultations, electronic signatures, and email-based status updates.
Yes. Most biotech founders already have a patent firm handling their core IP, but trademarks (company name, product brand, drug name proposals, platform name) are a separate workstream that often gets neglected until investors ask about it. We handle the trademark side at flat rates that scale with the company, not against your patent budget. Common Boston biotech filings: Class 5 (pharmaceuticals), Class 10 (medical devices), Class 9 (software, including bioinformatics tools), Class 42 (research and development services), Class 44 (medical services).
It can. The trademark applicant should be the legal entity that owns the mark, typically the C-Corp you incorporated as part of the spinout, not the university or your personal name. Make sure your tech transfer agreement is clear about brand and trademark ownership, since some agreements pull in IP language that was written for patents and gets fuzzy when applied to brand. We can review the brand and trademark language for you on the consultation call. The actual filing is straightforward once the entity question is settled.
Not at all. Whether you are in Boston proper, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Watertown, Newton, or anywhere else in the Greater Boston area, the federal trademark process is identical. We work with founders and businesses across the entire metro the same way. Remote consultations, electronic filings, and a single point of contact.
Massachusetts offers state-level trademark registration through the Secretary of the Commonwealth, but it only protects you within Massachusetts. Most Boston companies sell beyond state lines from day one, whether through SaaS, e-commerce, wholesale, or research partnerships. 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.
Yes, and you probably should, especially if you are still in stealth, beta, or pre-clinical. A Section 1(b) Intent-to-Use application lets you reserve your trademark with the USPTO before you have a single customer or trial participant. 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 Boston founders who are still in development. Read more in our guide to ITU applications.
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.