Trademark Class 40: Treatment of materials

Treatment of materials, including custom manufacturing, printing and recycling.

What class 40 covers

Class 40 is one of the 45 international classes used by the USPTO and most trademark offices worldwide, under the Nice Classification. Classes 1 to 34 cover goods — physical products — and classes 35 to 45 cover services. Class 40 is a services class.

You register a mark for particular goods or services, not in the abstract. That is why the same word can be owned by unrelated businesses in different classes, and why picking the right class matters as much as picking the right name.

Typically included in class 40

Custom manufacturing for others
Printing and engraving services
Metal treating and finishing
Textile dyeing and finishing
Recycling and waste treatment
Water treatment services
Food and drink preservation

Business types that usually file here

Contract manufacturers
Commercial printers
Metal finishing shops
Recycling companies
Custom fabricators
Screen printing shops

Notable brands operating in class 40

Companies whose goods or services fall wholly or partly within this class. This is a list of well-known names in the space, not a ranking — there is no authoritative public measure of trademark "size", and most of these businesses hold registrations across several classes rather than this one alone.

Waste Management
Republic Services
Clean Harbors
Casella Waste
Stericycle
Jabil
Flex
Sanmina
Celestica
Benchmark Electronics
Plexus
R.R. Donnelley
Quad/Graphics
Deluxe
Cimpress
Vistaprint
Shutterfly
Custom Ink
Printful
Sonoco
Ball Corporation
Crown Holdings
Nucor Recycling
Schnitzer Steel
Ecolab

Choosing the right class

Three mistakes cost applicants the most in this area:

Filing in too few classes. If you sell a product and also provide a service around it, that is often two classes. Registering only one leaves the other unprotected.
Filing in too many. Each class costs a separate fee, and the USPTO expects you to be using the mark, or to have a genuine intent to use it, for everything you list.
Ignoring related classes. Examiners routinely treat certain classes as related — clothing and clothing retail, for instance, or food products and restaurant services. A conflict in a related class can block you just as effectively as one in your own.

Our search checks related classes automatically, so a conflict in an adjacent class shows up rather than being silently ignored.