If opposition is filed against your trade mark application, you do not pay a single fixed amount. The official fee for filing opposition is set by the BOIP or the EUIPO, but what the procedure costs you afterwards depends on how you respond: whether you handle it yourself, engage a trade mark attorney, and how long the procedure lasts. This makes it difficult to name one amount in advance.
The key point is this: an opposition procedure is a substantive legal dispute between two parties, and the costs follow from the time and expertise that dispute requires. The sooner you know that a risk exists, the more room you have to limit that risk before it becomes a procedure.
What the trade mark office itself charges
Both the BOIP and the EUIPO use a fee schedule for filing opposition. This is a fixed, transparent amount paid directly to the office and can be found on their own website. This fee covers only the processing of the opposition itself, not the legal work involved. Whether you are the party filing opposition against someone else's application, or the party who must defend against opposition to your own application, this initial fee is separate from the question of how much work the case requires further on.
Why the rest of the costs are not fixed
Once opposition becomes substantive, it is about arguments: is there a likelihood of confusion, do the classes actually overlap, is the earlier mark in genuine use. A trade mark attorney answers such questions, and usually works on an hourly basis or with a fixed fee per phase of the procedure. How many phases there are depends on the other party: do they settle quickly, or do they proceed to a decision. That is why no one can guarantee a total amount in advance — not even an attorney, at best an estimate based on comparable cases.
This is precisely the point where the guided self-filing model has a limit. We prepare the application and do not file on your behalf, and that works well as long as the application itself is proceeding. Once opposition is filed, that is no longer an application matter but a legal dispute, and we transfer the file to a trade mark attorney. That transfer costs you no time, but the costs of the procedure itself then run through that attorney, not through us.
What affects costs in practice
Three factors usually determine most how expensive opposition becomes. First, whether you already respond with a well-reasoned position, or whether everything has to be worked out from scratch. Second, the number of classes and products the dispute concerns: the broader the overlap, the more there is to discuss. Third, the stance of the other party — a party seeking a quick compromise costs considerably less than a party pursuing the full procedure.
How you can limit the risk beforehand
The cheapest opposition is the opposition that is never filed. Some oppositions arise because an applicant did not know that a similar earlier mark was registered in the same classes. A conflict search against the public registers before filing provides an indication of this, and with see where you stand in five questions you get that picture without obligation. It is not a guarantee that opposition will never come — an indication remains an indication — but it does reduce the number of avoidable disputes.
Even after filing, staying alert pays off. Within the opposition period you must know that something is happening to be able to do something about it; those who only find out after the period ends have no choice left. Monitoring your own mark and new applications that resemble it should therefore be part of a carefully managed trade mark file, alongside careful preparation of the application itself, tailored to your situation.
What marcai.eu does and does not handle for you
The service fee for guided filing and the subscription for monitoring are listed transparently, separate from the fees you pay directly to the BOIP or EUIPO. We keep this distinction deliberate and clear: on the overview of service fee, subscription and fees you see exactly what goes through us and what goes directly to the office. The costs of an opposition procedure itself fall outside this, because that is no longer a filing process but a legal dispute with its own dynamics.
For an assessment tailored to your own case, a trade mark attorney or lawyer is the right party — not because we are unwilling to explain it, but because a reliable assessment requires knowledge of the specific case. Read more about how that handover works in practice, and what we do and do not do in this context, in the answers to frequently asked questions.
Would you like to know first whether your intended mark is, as far as can be established, free of conflicts before you file the application? Do the free quick scan or read further in the knowledge base — both are accessible without an account and give you an honest picture, even if that picture is not favourable.