Trademark Classes, Explained in Plain English

Every trademark application declares the goods or services it covers, sorted into 45 international ("Nice") classes — 34 for goods, 11 for services. Classes are why two identical names can both be fine: DELTA for faucets and DELTA for air travel don't confuse anyone about who sold them what.

The classes small brands actually meet

Class 25 — clothing, footwear, headgear (most apparel brands). Class 35 — retail-store and online-store services, advertising (this is the "I run a shop" class, distinct from the goods you sell). Class 9 — software you download, electronics. Class 42 — software as a service, design, development. Class 14 — jewelry. Class 16 — paper goods, stickers, prints. Class 20 — furniture. Class 21 — mugs and housewares. Class 30 — coffee, baked goods. Class 3 — cosmetics, candles (candles are actually class 4 — the classification has traps exactly like this, which is why applications list specific goods, not just numbers).

Why classes matter for monitoring

A new filing identical to your name in an unrelated class is usually a curiosity, not a crisis — while a merely similar name in your class can be the real problem. MarkAlarm scores both, but weights class overlap heavily: same-class collisions can reach high-priority alerts, different-class ones stay low-priority notes. That weighting only applies once you specify classes — an apparel brand might watch 25 and 35. A watch left open to all 45 classes is treated as caring about every class, so nothing gets damped and an identical name in an unrelated class can still alert as high. If you are getting alerts you consider noise, setting classes on the watch is the fix.

The USPTO's own ID Manual lists acceptable goods/services wording per class if you want the authoritative source: it's public, like everything else in this system.