Trademark scams are not slowing down. Although the USPTO continues to warn applicants and registrants, some criminal arrests have been made, and there is some inter-agency work being done, the mailings continue to proliferate.
I receive many comments on my IPelton blog posts warning about these scams. I recently checked to see which pages on erikpelton.com received the most page views in the last 30 days. The top 5 pages all relate to scam warnings, see table below.
More needs to be done. There ought to be persistent outrage that (a) consumers are receiving such notices repeatedly, (b) some people are being duped from time to time, and (c) the government has not found a solution.
Think of all the money going to these scams that could be going to real trademark protection or other investments benefiting growing businesses?
While the USPTO has made some progress on this, surely there must be other solutions. How about a task force to bring together public and private ideas and resources? Where are the SBA, the DOJ, the FTC (“Protecting America’s Consumers”), the US Postal Inspection Service, TPAC (Trademark Public Advisory Committee), INTA, and others to sound the alarm louder and warn consumers and help bring an end to this nonsense?
