In recent months, the USPTO has stepped up it’s efforts to educate trademark applicant and registrants about solicitations that target trademark owners and provide specious or grossly overpriced services and/or are meant to deceive the recipient into thinking they come from a government agency.
The PTO first cracked down on the U.S. Trademark Registration Office, sending it a cease and desist letter and demanding it change the name and stop mimicking government correspondence.
Now, the USPTO has published a WARNING: Non-USPTO Solicitations That May Resemble Official USPTO featuring a list of more than 10 solicitations, with links to samples, for which it has recently received complaints.
The offending list (via USPTO.gov – click links for sample solicitations):
- United States Trademark Registration Office
- Patent & Trademark Agency
- Trademark Registration and Monitoring Office
- United States Trademark Maintenance Service
- U.S. Trademark Compliance Service
- WDTP
- WIPT
- TM Collection
- TM Edition
- Patent Trademark Register
- Register of International Patents and Trademarks
- Trademark Renewal Service
- Trademark Safeguard – Trademark Monitoring Service
The USPTO’s efforts on this matter are greatly appreciated! Until these scams are out of business, people will continue to be their victims.
Despite my many warning to clients in communications to them and on this blog, these solicitations continue (and must be successful to justify their continued operations and postage).
If you have been a victim of any of these scams, I urge you to contact the FTC and your local attorney general to complain.
Thanks for this information. The church I work at recieved a similar letter to those included. It did not seem right to me from the get-go. We’ve been seeing more aqnd more scams like this lately.
Again thanks for your information.
Here is another one I think.
IPTO International Patent and Trademark Organization from Czech Republic