The following is an edited transcript of my video 25 Ways to Avoid Trademark Scams.
- Know that everything you file related to a trademark at the USPTO is in the public records.
- Use an attorney for many reasons when you’re filing a trademark application, but one of the valuable reasons is they can give you guidance about scams and they can act as a buffer by being the primary contact.
- If you’re scammed, report it to law enforcement to help gain momentum for some sort of crackdown on these scams.
- If you receive or learn about a scam, share it with your attorney so that they can advise you about it and they can stay up to date about the latest tools that the scammers are using.
- If you receive some sort of solicitation or communication about your trademark that’s not from your counsel, look at it carefully. Look at the name of who it’s coming from.
- Be aware of acronyms other than USPTO.
- Look out for misuse of the USPTO’s name and logo because scammers will do that too.
- Look at the address. If there’s a return address on the envelope or an address asking for money to be sent somewhere, look at that. Address the USPTO is in Alexandria, Virginia. So anything related to a trademark that’s coming from an address that’s different from that is definitely not from the USPTO.
- Look at the fine print. If you get something in the mail or by email related to your trademark, there might be very small fine print. That’s where the secret is often hidden, that this is bogus scam, requesting money for something that’s not necessary.
- Check your trademark renewal dates and keep track of them, because some of the scams have to do with sending out fake renewal dates and trying to collect money well in advance of when a renewal can even be filed.
- Beware of offers for publishing your trademark in some sort of directory. When you apply for a trademark at the USPTO, you’re automatically in the USPTOs directory. That’s really the only one that matters. All these publication offerings are scams.
- Don’t put your phone number in the USPTO records. It’s not a requirement, even though there’s a field asking for it, and scams are now coming by telephone as well.
- Don’t put your home address in the USPTO public records. These are public records. There are ways that scammers can crawl and pull all the information from those public records. You do not want your home address in there.
- Be on alert for calls from someone claiming to be from the USPTO that ask for money over the phone. The USPTO is never going to ask for money over the phone. They cannot take your money over the phone.
- Check and read about the USPTO’s own resources on trademark scams and solicitations. They have examples and a fair amount of information at uspto.gov.
- Check my resources freely available at isthisatrademarkscam.com. I’ve got examples and I’ve got more podcasts, videos, blog posts, et cetera, talking about all these issues.
- Use the trademark scam decision tree. It helps you break down if you’ve received something that might be a scam to analyze and categorize whether it is a scam.
- Read the article that I wrote for the American Bar Association in 2021 called The Growing Threat of Trademark Scams. In that article, I break down a lot of specifics and examples of the scams.
- If you are an attorney who files trademarks, search your own name in the USPTO records from time to time and make sure that other people aren’t using your name to pretend to be the attorney for somebody else. This is a terrible, unfortunate scam that we’ve also seen in recent years.
- Tell the USPTO you want to see them do more to combat the scammers—more resources, more ideas, more education, more warnings.
- Follow me on social media: Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube. I’m frequently posting examples of the latest scams, so following me is a good way to stay alert.
- Use the USPTO’s employee contact lookup. When in doubt if you received an email or phone call that alleges to be from the USPTO, you can use the employee search function at the USPTO to look up the employee and call them back, because scammers might actually be using real employees names. You can call the employee’s actual desk and find out if you had just been speaking to them or if there’s something suspicious going on.
- Verify any trademark fee requests with the USPTO’s current fee schedule. The USPTO is never going to ask for fees over the phone, but if you do get a request for fees, find out if that fee even correlates to the USPTO’s filing fees.
- Understand that online filing services to help people with the trademark application process are not the same as working with a law firm and do not offer the same type of service and guidance—and might be some of them involved in scams
- Subscribe to my blog at ipelton.com. That’s where you can be sure you’ll get email updates when I publish new materials, examples, videos, et cetera, with the latest information about scammers.
