Traps for the Unwary Trademark Owner (Part One) – Misleading or Fraudulent Trademark Registration Notices

It has taken more than a year and you have gone through all the hoops to get your trademark registered.  You receive a notice from an official-sounding entity requesting an additional fee, such as a “Publication Fee” to publish your trademark on a trademark register such as an “International Trademark Register” or “World Trademark Register”.  Since the notice looks like an official government notice, you may think that the listed fees must actually be paid in order to complete the trademark registration process.  However, the offer is likely a misleading or fraudulent offer from a private company.  These companies often simply list your trademark on an unofficial private website in exchange for a fee.  This type of publication typically has little or no commercial or legal value.

Here are some examples of such misleading or fraudulent letters:

If a U.S. attorney assisted you in registering your mark, you will not receive this kind of solicitation from them and, as a general matter, you should only receive official communications from them.

If you filed a trademark application yourself, all official USPTO correspondence about your trademark application or registration currently should come from the “United States Patent and Trademark Office” in Alexandria, Virginia, and all emails should come from the domain “@uspto.gov.”

Don’t be deceived by company names that sound like government agencies or offers that reference your trademark information or sections of the U.S. Code. Some company names may include terms such as “United States,” “U.S.,” “Trademark,” “Patent,” “Registration,” “Office,” or “Agency.” For example, the operators of a private company—the “Trademark Compliance Center”—were recently convicted of money laundering in a trademark renewal scam, and the operator of two entities sending out misleading solicitations under the names “Patent and Trademark Office” and “Patent and Trademark Bureau” pled guilty to four counts of federal mail fraud.

If you receive any official-looking correspondence and are in doubt as to whether the correspondence is legitimate, we recommend contacting a licensed trademark or patent attorney to confirm whether the correspondence is legitimate. If you are not working with a licensed IP attorney, we would recommend checking the U.S. Trademark Office’s online system to see if they have sent any official correspondence that matches the correspondence that you received. This can be done using the following link: https://tsdr.uspto.gov.

And always err on the side of caution.

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