Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti wishes to inform its clients concerning the existence of solicitations regarding intellectual property matters not from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Private companies not associated with the USPTO are using trademark application and registration information located in the USPTO’s database to mail or e-mail trademark-related solicitations. Such solicitations from companies include offers for legal services and trademark monitoring services. These companies may also solicit patent owners as these companies can access public information regarding maintenance fees in the USPTO databases. Many of these services and fees are unnecessary or inadequate in providing rights or protections.
Companies attempting to resemble the USPTO, will use terms such as “U.S.,”, “Patent,” “Registration,” “Trademark,” “Office,” and “Agency.” These companies will attempt to copy the appearance of official government documents using information publicly available from USPTO databases. Any official correspondence from the USPTO will be from the office in Alexandria, VA, or from the domain “@uspto.gov.”
If Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti is responsible for your intellectual property matters, we will provide you with timely notice regarding any required actions. If you are a client that receives a non-USPTO solicitation regarding your intellectual property, please forward it to us or submit a copy to the U.S. government for investigation at [email protected]. For more information regarding submissions and a list of examples of non-USPTO solicitations, please visit http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/solicitation_warnings.jsp
For information regarding scams involving the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) please visit the following links: http://www.wipo.int/portal/en/scam_warning.html and http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/warning/pct_warning.html.