As an Intellectual Property Attorney, there are three unavoidable forces in the universe:
(1) Death,
(2) Taxes, and
(3) Trademark Scam Letters.
An unfortunate reality today is that at least one Trademark Scam Letter follows virtually every trademark filing.
For this reason, we tell all of our clients to be extra vigilant about these Trademark Scam Letters. We tell all of our clients to treat everything they receive regarding their trademarks with extreme skepticism unless it comes directly from our office. We also tell our clients that we will pay all trademark-related fees on their behalf so they will never have to submit payment for services to any entity other than our firm.
Despite all these warnings…
An unavoidable reality is that trademark filings are public. By their very nature they have to be public. A trademark application serves a public-notice function, so it must be publicly available. This means that any nefarious actor can take the publicly available information in the trademark filings and misappropriate it for their own malicious purposes.
These Trademark Scam Letters increasingly look very legitimate and convincing. To the untrained eye, it can be practically impossible to distinguish trademark scams from legitimate correspondence. Some examples we’ve seen recently include the following:
The USPTO is aware of these nefarious actors and they publish their own guidance on the matter (USPTO - Beware of Email Scams; USPTO – Protect Against Trademark Scams). The USPTO does what it can to shut these scammers down, but it’s a game of “Whac-A-Mole” (a registered trademark of Mattel) and they keep popping up despite the government’s best efforts.
The best defense is to be extra vigilant and treat all correspondence regarding your trademarks with extreme skepticism. Since our firm handles all communications and makes all payments on behalf of our clients we tell our clients that all official communications regarding their marks will come from our office, everything else can be ignored.
Stay vigilant, my trademark friends!
If you have any questions regarding filing, prosecuting, enforcing or defending your trademarks, please contact Chris Proskey, Intellectual Property Attorney at the BrownWinick Law Firm.