Nice class
Nice Classification — international classification of goods and services for trademarks
Definition
Nice Classification is the international system that organizes goods and services into 45 classes (1–34 for goods, 35–45 for services) for the purpose of trademark registration. It was established by the Nice Agreement of 1957, is administered by WIPO, and is updated every five years. Same name across two different Nice classes can co-exist as trademarks.
Verbatim from the source
“International Classification of Goods and Services also known as the Nice Classification was established by the Nice Agreement (1957), is a system of classifying goods and services for the purpose of registering trademarks.”
Technical detail
The 45 classes split into 34 for goods (Class 1: chemicals; Class 9: scientific instruments and software; Class 25: clothing; etc.) and 11 for services (Class 35: business services; Class 42: scientific and technological services including SaaS; Class 43: food services; etc.).
Why it matters for a clearance check: two products sharing the same word mark can both hold federal trademarks if they're filed in different Nice classes. NameVerdict scopes its USPTO TESS lane to the user's product class so it doesn't flag irrelevant collisions in unrelated industries — a software company shouldn't get a RED verdict because a restaurant in another state uses the same name.
WIPO publishes the official Nice classification list and updates it on a five-year cycle.
Where it appears
- NameVerdict Used here
Lane 2 (USPTO trademarks) is filtered by the user's selected Nice class so that the trademark search returns relevant collisions only. The form lets users pick the closest class or auto-infer from a one-sentence product description.
Related terms
- Common-law trademark
A common-law trademark is an unregistered mark that becomes enforceable through actual use in commerce, without any registration filing. Pro…
- USPTO TESS
USPTO TESS — recently rebranded as Trademark Search — is the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's free public database of every federal tradem…