Most trademark advice is written from the filer's chair — how to apply, what it costs, how long it takes. This report looks at the other side of the register: what the data itself says once tens of thousands of applications have been filed and examined. Every figure below is computed from the TMarkMetric database of 97,978 U.S. federal trademark records drawn from USPTO source data.
The headline number: of 97,978 marks analyzed, 88,275 (90.1%) are live and registered, and 9,690 (9.9%) are dead — abandoned, cancelled, or expired. Roughly one in ten trademarks that enter the system does not survive.
Registration vs. Death: One in Ten Marks Doesn't Make It
The register is not a museum of granted rights — it is a churn. A mark can die at many points: an application abandoned after an Office Action nobody answered, a registration cancelled after a failed Section 8 maintenance filing, or a mark simply left to expire at renewal. In this dataset, 9,690 records are already dead.
That is the single most useful fact for anyone about to file: a "dead" mark is not a permanent roadblock. If a name you want shows up as dead, the rights may be genuinely available again — see what a dead trademark means before you assume a name is taken.
Which States File the Most Trademarks
Ranking owners by their state of record produces a result that looks wrong until you understand it:
Delaware leads the entire country — ahead of California, Texas, New York, and Florida — despite being the second-smallest state by land and around 1/40th of California's population. The reason is not that Delawareans are unusually entrepreneurial; it is that a huge share of U.S. companies incorporate in Delaware for its corporate law, and the registered owner of a trademark is the legal entity, not the founder's kitchen table. Wyoming appearing in the top ten tells the same story from the LLC angle — it is a favored, low-cost state to form an LLC.
Takeaway for filers: a trademark's owner address tells you where a business is organized, not where it sells. Do not read state filing counts as a map of real economic activity — read them as a map of incorporation.
The Most Active Trademark Classes
Every application is filed in one or more of the 45 Nice classes. Counting the primary class on each mark, these nine dominate:
Class 9 — which covers software, apps, downloadable content, and electronics — is the most-claimed class of all, a direct reflection of how much of the modern economy ships as code. It is followed by the perennial branding-heavy categories: Class 25 (clothing), Class 41 (entertainment and education), and Class 35 (advertising and business services, the class most e-commerce and retail brands need). If you are filing in one of these crowded classes, expect a harder likelihood-of-confusion landscape and search accordingly.
Who Owns Trademarks? Mostly Individuals and Small LLCs
The 97,978 records map to 71,934 distinct owners — an average of just 1.4 marks per owner. Trademark ownership in the U.S. is not a corporate game dominated by a handful of giants; it is an extreme long tail. Individuals and single-member LLCs make up the overwhelming majority of owners, each holding one or two marks. The largest single portfolios in the set — household names like ESPN and Del Monte — top out around 100–140 marks, a rounding error against the total.
The practical implication: the register you are searching against is built mostly by people exactly like you, filing one brand at a time. That is also why so many marks go dead — small owners are the least likely to keep up with maintenance deadlines.
Word Marks Beat Logos More Than 3 to 1
By mark type, Standard Character (word) marks account for roughly 77% of the dataset, versus a much smaller share of design/logo marks. This is the market voting with its filing fees: a word mark protects the name itself in any font or styling, which is broader and cheaper than protecting a specific logo. For most brands, filing the word mark first is the higher-leverage move — the logo can follow.
Methodology
Figures are computed from the TMarkMetric database, a snapshot of 97,978 U.S. federal trademark records sourced from USPTO data. "Registered" counts marks in a live-registered status; "dead" counts abandoned, cancelled, and expired records. State counts use the owner's state of record. Class counts use the primary (first-listed) Nice class on each mark. Because the dataset is a large sample of the full USPTO register rather than the complete register, treat these as representative distributions, not official USPTO totals. Aggregates were pulled on 2026-07-14.
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of trademarks get abandoned or cancelled?
In this dataset of 97,978 U.S. trademark records, 9.9% are dead — abandoned, cancelled, or expired — while 90.1% are live and registered. In other words, roughly one in ten trademarks that enters the system does not survive to remain a live registration.
Why does Delaware file the most trademarks?
Delaware leads because a large share of U.S. companies incorporate there for its corporate law, and the registered owner of a trademark is the legal entity — so the mark is recorded at the company's Delaware address regardless of where the business actually operates. The count reflects incorporation, not local economic activity. Wyoming appears in the top ten for the same reason on the LLC side.
What is the most common trademark class?
Class 9 — covering software, mobile apps, downloadable content, and electronics — is the single most-claimed Nice class, ahead of Class 25 (clothing), Class 41 (education and entertainment), and Class 35 (advertising and business services).
Do most trademarks belong to big corporations?
No. The 97,978 records map to 71,934 distinct owners — an average of about 1.4 marks each. U.S. trademark ownership is an extreme long tail dominated by individuals and small LLCs; even the largest single portfolios hold only 100–140 marks.