If you've ever applied for a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), you no doubt were thereafter sent an assortment of very official looking notices instructing you to pay thousands of dollars to entities with official-sounding names and logos. These entities are, in fact, not actually affiliated with the government. They merely acquired your contact information from the public notice filings that are associated with your trademark registration. When a federal trademark application is filed, the mailing and email addresses of the applicant become part of public record. If your attorney files your trademark on your behalf, bogus correspondence would be sent to them, not you. Any competent attorney will readily distinguish USPTO correspondence from the deceptive commercial solicitations sent by these entities attempting to disguise their letter as official government correspondence.

Recently, the USPTO has been pursuing private companies that have been using the public information on record with the USPTO, like trademark applications and registration information, in the USPTO's database to mail and/or email trademark related solicitations. In identifying the problem, the USPTO explained that many of these private companies, which are not affiliated with the USPTO, use the contact information on public record to send applicants and registrants solicitations that often mimic the design and language of official government documents. They may use buzzwords in their names to try to resemble the USPTO while also referencing specific trademarks, application serial numbers, and/or registration numbers to appear more official. 

These solicitations often include invoices referencing fees they state are overdue or are legally required to be paid. They invoices may be for work that you or your attorneys have already done in regard to the filing or for work which is entirely unnecessary. For example, the solicitation may state that the fees are necessary to record trademarks with the United States Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) or in private registries. 

It is also important to note that regardless of what they letters may state, only a licensed attorney can represent an applicant or registrant in front of the USPTO, while companies that solely offer other trademark related services may not.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has recently announced that two men from California, Artashes Darbinyan and Orbel Hakobyan, pled guilty to charges of mail fraud and money laundering via a scam that targeted trademark applicants. They admitted that they used companies called Trademark Compliance Center (TCC) and Trademark Compliance Office (TCO) to make fraudulent offers for services like monitoring trademarks for possible infringement and to register an applicant's trademark with the CBP. They used this scam to steal approximately $1.66 million from approximately 4,446 USPTO registrants and applicants.

To verify that the letters or emails received are official USPTO correspondence, be sure to read the document carefully and confirm that the company name matches exactly to United States Patent and Trademark Office without any variation. All official USPTO mail is sent from their office in Alexandria, Virginia and all official USPTO emails are generated from the @uspto.gov domain. You can learn more by visiting the USPTO's Non-USPTO Solicitations page. And of course, you are always invited and encouraged to contact Pierce Law Group LLP to verify the legitimacy of any document that you receive purporting to affect your legal rights or requiring some sort of payment to ensure them.

If you receive a solicitation that may be a scam, you can file a consumer complaint with the Federal Trade Commission at FTC.gov or our Firm can help you with the filing of such a complaint.

Pierce Law Group LLP assists clients with the proper registration of trademark, counseling clients in their determination as to what marks are really necessary, and bringing legal challenges when others infringe on our clients' marks.