Registering a Trademark in California

How state registration works in California, how it differs from a federal trademark, where to search the California register, and what to do before you file.

State vs. federal: what a California registration actually gets you

A California trademark registration is granted by the California Secretary of State and gives you rights inside California only. A federal registration from the United States Patent and Trademark Office gives you rights across all fifty states, the ability to use the ® symbol, a basis for suing in federal court, and a public record that other applicants will find when they run their own clearance searches.

State registration is usually cheaper and faster. It suits a business that trades in one state and has no plans to expand. It does not stop someone in another state from registering the same name federally and then asserting that federal registration against you. That asymmetry catches a lot of owners by surprise, and it is the single most important thing to understand before choosing between the two.

You also have common law rights from the moment you use a mark in commerce in a particular geographic area, even with no registration at all. Those rights are real but narrow, hard to prove, and limited to where you can show actual use.

Trademarks and the California economy

California's business base leans toward technology and software, entertainment and media, agriculture, wine, apparel and consumer brands — the largest volume of trademark filings of any state. Those sectors shape which classes matter locally: a business in one of them will usually be filing in the classes that cover its goods and the classes that cover the services it wraps around them, and conflicts tend to cluster there.

Trademark law itself is federal — the Lanham Act of 1946 governs registration and infringement nationwide, and it applies identically in California and everywhere else. What varies by state is the parallel state register, the fee, the forms, and how the state office handles examination. California's system sits alongside the federal one rather than replacing it.

Searching the California register

The California Secretary of State maintains the searchable state record:

Search the California trademark register →

Where the California trademark office is

Confirm this address before mailing anything. Offices relocate and several states now require online filing. A paper application sent to a superseded address can be delayed or returned, and with it your filing date.

What to do once you are there:

1. Search the exact name you want first.
2. Then search each significant word on its own. A registration for one distinctive word can block a longer name built around it.
3. Try obvious misspellings and sound-alikes. Registers are indexed by spelling, so a name that sounds identical but is spelled differently will not appear unless you search for it.
4. Note that many state systems search business entity names and trademarks together, so some results will be company registrations rather than marks.

State systems are reorganised periodically. If that link no longer resolves, search for “California Secretary of State trademark search”.

Trademark filings from California, by the numbers

Drawn from our own index of the federal register, counting marks whose owner of record is in California. Updated with each data refresh.

The classes California files in most

Where the state's filings concentrate — and therefore where its register is most crowded.

If you are filing in one of these classes in California, expect more competition for a name than the national average would suggest.

Filing volume over the last decade

The most recent year is usually incomplete, since applications continue to be indexed after filing.

The most reused words in California marks

Words appearing across the largest number of California filings. A name built on one of these starts from a weaker position, because the term is already doing work for many other owners.

• LABS720
• SUMMIT180
• NORTH180
• HARBOR180
• PEAK180
• FORGE180
• RIVER180
• STONE180
• BLUE180
• IRON180
• CEDAR180

Who holds the most marks in California

Owners of record with the largest portfolios in the state. These are the parties most likely to notice — and oppose — a new filing near their territory.

Recently filed from California

The latest applications on record from owners in the state.

Major companies headquartered in California

The brands a California business is most likely to run into on the register — either as the owner of a conflicting mark, or as an example of how heavily a sector in this state is already trademarked. These are significant companies based in the state rather than a ranking, since revenue order shifts annually and headquarters move.

1. Apple
2. Alphabet
3. Meta Platforms
4. Chevron
5. Wells Fargo
6. Walt Disney
7. Intel
8. Cisco
9. Oracle
10. Salesforce
11. Netflix
12. Nvidia

Large companies file defensively, often across many classes and often for names never brought to market. If your name sits near one of these brands' territory, search before you build on it.

Trademark matters connected to California

Summaries are for orientation only. Confirm any case detail against the docket or a primary source before relying on it.

How to get a trademark in California

1. Search the California state register

   Go to the California Secretary of State search page and run the searches described above. This tells you whether the name is already claimed inside California — but only inside California.

2. Run a national search on TrademarkReviews

   The state register is the smaller half of the picture. Use the free national search to check the same name against millions of federal records, including sound-alikes, plurals, near-spellings and marks that contain your name with a generic word attached. Select the classes you plan to file in, run the full screen, and download the PDF report — that report is what you take to an attorney so they start with the conflicts already identified rather than billing you to find them.

3. Talk to a trademark attorney licensed in California

   We do not publish a ranked list of firms, because no verifiable public ranking of trademark practices exists and a bad referral costs you more than no referral. Use the official source instead:

   • State Bar of California — operates or points to the state's lawyer referral service
   • USPTO guidance on hiring a trademark attorney

   If you are not a US citizen or domiciled in the United States, the USPTO requires you to be represented by a US-licensed attorney to file. Even when it is optional, an attorney is who decides whether a conflict you found is fatal or workable — that judgement is the part software cannot do.

Related

• Trademark registration guides for all 50 states
• What each of the 45 trademark classes covers
• Trademark disputes and what they teach