After filing an application for the federal registration of a trademark, the contents of the application, subsequent prosecution, and registration are made a matter of public record on the US Patent & Trademark Office’s (USPTO) website. This means that regardless of whether you engaged an attorney to file your application, certain information about you and your trademark is publicly available, including, at minimum, your name (or your business name) and address, the mark, the goods or services offered under the mark, and future deadlines.
There are private companies that exist for the purpose of using the publicly available information to generate solicitations to trademark applicants and registrants. Private companies commonly use terms such as “United States,” “patent,” “trademark,” “office,” and “agency” in the solicitation, which can be misleading. The solicitations typically contain an offer of services for a fee related to a deadline.
Be wary of these solicitations. It’s not unheard of for these types of private companies to collect fees from trademark applicants and registrants, pocket those fees, and take no action on the relevant application or registration. In addition, to the extent action is taken on your behalf, it’s done without knowledge regarding the skill level and experience of the party performing the action.
Official correspondence regarding your trademark application or registration comes from the “United States Patent & Trademark Office” located in Alexandria, Virginia, and all electronic communication comes from @uspto.gov. Still, you should be aware that some of the latest scams involve third parties spoofing the USPTO email address.
If you receive a notice regarding your trademark filing and are uncertain about the legitimacy of the notice, please contact an attorney in Barclay Damon’s Branding, Trademarks & Copyrights Practice Area to review the notice before taking any action.
If you have any questions regarding the content of the alert, please contact Liz Cominolli, Branding, Trademarks & Copyrights Practice Area co-chair, at ecominolli@barclaydamon.com; Katie Markert, counsel, at kmarkert@barclaydamon.com; or another member of the firm’s Damon’s Branding, Trademarks & Copyrights Practice Area.