Glossary
French: classe
A class is one of the 45 categories of the international Nice Classification into which the goods and services of a trademark filing must be sorted. Classes 1 through 34 cover goods; classes 35 through 45 cover services. The system is the same one used by the USPTO, so US counsel will find it familiar.
A single filing may designate one or several classes, up to all 45 — though a French filing in 45 classes would cost €190 + (40 × €44) = €1,950 in official fees alone, and such broad filings are rare in a system where unused registrations become vulnerable to revocation for non-use after five years.
As in US practice, classification is purely administrative: you cannot rely on class membership to determine whether goods or services are similar. Products in the same class may be entirely dissimilar — class 9, for example, contains fire extinguishers, microprocessors and eyeglasses, which share a class but not similarity.
The classification is still taken into account in one respect: goods and services that are not in the same class cannot, a priori, be identical — at most similar.
Because classes drive both official fees and the scope of protection, choosing them is a strategic exercise, not a formality to delegate to a checklist. A narrow filing in only the classes actually covering the applicant’s real activity is cheaper up front, faster to clear through a similarity search (fewer classes mean a smaller universe of potentially conflicting marks), and less vulnerable later to a revocation for non-use action, since every class filed has to be genuinely used within five years or risk being stripped away class by class. A broader filing across many classes buys more room for future expansion but multiplies both the filing cost and the later non-use exposure — a tradeoff US applicants used to a single national USPTO strategy sometimes underweight when they file the same broad class list in France or before the EUIPO “just to be safe.”
Each of the 45 classes has an official class heading — a short list of general indications meant to summarize the class. Historically, some jurisdictions treated the heading as covering everything alphabetically listed under that class (“class-heading-covers-all”); French and EU practice does not: only the goods and services actually and specifically listed in the application are protected, whether or not they happen to fall under a broader heading term. US counsel should specify the actual goods and services precisely, in language recognized by the office’s own classification tools, rather than relying on the heading as a shortcut.
The Nice Classification is the same 45-class system the USPTO uses, so a US applicant’s home classification instincts largely transfer directly — a genuine convenience US counsel filing abroad for the first time in France or the EU do not always expect. The practical differences sit elsewhere: USPTO practice requires a statement (and, ultimately, proof) of use in commerce for each class claimed under a use-based or intent-to-use application, layering an evidentiary burden on top of the classification choice that has no direct French equivalent at the filing stage (though non-use exposure arrives later, at the five-year mark, in both systems).
A US SaaS company files in France for “computer software” in class 9 and “business consulting services” in class 35, mirroring its US registration exactly. A French competitor later opposes based on an earlier mark registered only in class 35. Because classes 9 and 35 are different classes, the applicant’s class 9 goods cannot be identical to the opponent’s class 35 services — but they could still be held similar if a factor-by-factor analysis shows a close commercial connection, meaning the class boundary narrows the fight without ending it.
Class selection is one of the first strategic choices in choosing a trademark and directly shapes the cost quoted for a French or EU filing — see trademark fees and costs for the fee schedule itself. See also goods and services and similarity of goods and services.