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THE TAKE
It looks like a comparison-shopping exercise. From 1 April 2026, the UK Intellectual Property Office raised its trademark application fee for the first time in years — from £170 to £205, with each additional class climbing from £50 to £60. Across the Channel, the European Union Intellectual Property Office continues to charge €850 for a first-class filing covering all 27 member states, with the second class at €50 and each subsequent class at €150. In the UAE, the Ministry of Economy and Tourism charges roughly AED 6,500 per class in government fees alone, with total real-world filing costs typically landing between AED 8,500 and AED 12,000 once translation, agent and publication fees are added. So at a glance, the answer looks obvious: file in the UK if you want the cheapest single-country protection, file with the EUIPO if you want the cheapest per-country economics, and budget more for the UAE.
That answer is wrong. Or rather — it answers the wrong question.
The three jurisdictions don't compete on price. They optimise for completely different things, and the cost gaps between them reflect those differences. The UK system is tuned for cost-efficiency and offers a common-law fallback called passing off, which gives unregistered marks meaningful protection if you can demonstrate goodwill and reputation. The EUIPO is tuned for territorial reach: one filing, twenty-seven member states, and an SME Fund that reimburses up to 75% of fees for EU-based small and medium-sized enterprises (capped at €700 per business). The UAE is tuned for enforcement teeth — once you hold a certificate, the Ministry of Economy, Department of Economic Development and Customs can act on your behalf within days. Critically, the UAE has no passing-off equivalent. Unregistered marks have very limited enforceability. The certificate effectively is the right.
The strategic question, then, isn't which jurisdiction is cheapest. It's which sequence of filings actually protects the business — and that question has at least five common wrong answers.
The first is class drift. The Nice Classification has 45 classes of goods and services; the UAE migrated to the 13th edition on 27 January 2026, which means software, fintech and content businesses now classify differently than they did in 2024. A trademark registered in Class 35 — covering advertising and retail — will not protect against an infringer operating in Class 41 (publishing and education) even if the customer experience is functionally identical. There is no refund for filing in the wrong class, and there is no easy way to retrospectively widen protection without filing again from scratch.
The second is the use trap. The UK and EU both require genuine use within five years of registration. Revocation actions for non-use are now a routine commercial weapon between competitors. Founders register defensive marks in classes they aspire to enter, then quietly lose them in year six because nobody recorded evidence of use. Specialist counsel know to build a "use file" on day one — invoices, packaging samples, screenshots, distribution agreements. Founders who file alone almost never do.
The third is the Madrid Protocol's central-attack vulnerability. The Madrid system lets a single home filing extend internationally across 130-plus territories, and the UAE became a member in December 2021, making Dubai a credible regional gateway. But every Madrid extension depends on its home registration for the first five years. If a UAE base is successfully challenged within that window, every extension worldwide collapses with it — UK, EU, US, the lot. The fix is straightforward (transformation, dependency planning, careful sequencing), but invisible to anyone who hasn't been burned by it.
The fourth is the squatter problem. The UAE's first-to-file regime, combined with public publication of applications, means professional filers monitor adjacent jurisdictions and pre-empt high-value brands entering the market. Recovering a squatted mark is technically possible but practically expensive and slow. Counsel familiar with the regional landscape will pre-empt this with watching services and bad-faith opposition strategies long before the first product lands in market. A founder relying on Google searches and template applications cannot.
The fifth is distinctiveness drift. The UKIPO, EUIPO and UAE Ministry of Economy each apply different distinctiveness thresholds. A mark accepted in the UAE may be refused outright in the EU on absolute grounds. A mark accepted in the EU may face passing-off challenges in the UK from a prior user with documented goodwill. Filing strategy isn't just about cost — it's about choosing the right jurisdiction in which to test a mark first. Get that order wrong and every subsequent filing can be prejudiced.
None of these mistakes are exotic. They are the standard distribution of errors in DIY trademark filings, and they explain why the UKIPO's record 173,224 applications in 2024 produced a meaningfully smaller number of clean registrations than the headline implies. Refusals, oppositions and abandonments quietly absorb a significant share of every cohort.
The asymmetry, when you spell it out, is brutal. The cost of an initial conversation with a qualified trademark attorney in any of these three jurisdictions is broadly equivalent to the cost of a single class fee. The cost of litigating a botched filing — according to legal-cost benchmarking from Traverse Legal and others — runs between roughly $120,000 and $750,000 depending on jurisdiction and complexity. Norton Rose Fulbright's 2026 Annual Litigation Trends Survey found that four in ten companies now name trademark and licensing disputes as their most significant legal exposure, a shift from prior years when employment and regulatory issues dominated the rankings.
For a founder operating across the Gulf, the UK and the EU — which describes most of this newsletter's readers — the workable answer is genuinely strategic. File in the UAE first to anchor priority, lock in the lowest enforcement risk, and exploit the One Day TM examination initiative. Extend via Madrid into the EU and UK within the six-month priority window, picking up the EUIPO's per-country economics and the UK's common-law backstop in the same move. Engage counsel on day one to map classes, build the use file, and stress-test the mark for distinctiveness in the strictest jurisdiction first.
That sequence is not visible from a fee comparison table. It emerges from understanding how the three systems interlock — which is precisely the part that DIY filings consistently miss. Trademarks are the cheapest piece of legal infrastructure a business will ever own, and the most expensive one to get wrong. Speak to a lawyer.
THE SIGNAL
"Four in ten companies now name trademark and licensing disputes as their most significant legal exposure — a notable shift from prior years when employment and regulatory risks dominated."
— Norton Rose Fulbright, 2026 Annual Litigation Trends Survey
THE QUESTION
Your last branding agency invoice was probably north of £20,000. Your last conversation with a trademark attorney was probably £0. Which of those two decisions is your business actually betting on?
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
The views expressed in this newsletter are Jonathan Ashton's own personal perspectives and do not constitute legal advice. Anyone considering trademark filing strategy should engage qualified counsel in the relevant jurisdiction.
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