It turns out that overseas scammers target more than just naive pensioners. They try to hit up businesses, too.
Last November, my friend Lyle suggested that I trademark the name of Nesota LLC’s main product, Blurity. If nothing else, a registered trademark would be a piece of property that could be useful in the event of a sale of the company. I thought it sounded like a good idea, or at least one that wouldn’t hurt, so I put the process in motion. Eight months later, the registration certificate arrived:
Blurity trademark registration (click for larger)
It didn’t take long for the sharks to smell blood.
In the span of a few weeks, I received several letters from various European locales, each of which made every attempt to look like official trademark registration forms.
The official-looking envelope from Switzerland (click for larger)
They used mixtures of French and English. They had official-sounding names. They made vague promises of IP protection. And oh yes, they asked for money.
It seems that a bit less than US$3000 was the typical going rate. It was only in the smallest of the small type that the letters fessed up about not being official government agencies. In a strict sense, they were not phishing, since they did not impersonate a legitimate agency. However, in a practical sense, given the unfamiliarity of most Americans with European trademarks, the letters were effectively pretending to be the actual registrar, OHIM.
Send us money! We are so official! (click for larger)
Nesota LLC is small enough that the thought of dropping a couple grand on a European trademark is a complete non-starter, but I have to imagine that slightly larger companies could be duped. Maybe an innocent admin would see the official-looking bill and think that she’s just doing her job by paying it. Empirically, there must be some suckers out there, because there are several groups sending out these Who’s-Who-type propositions.
If you’re in the position of acquiring trademarks, be vigilant. Cutting checks based on uncertainty is a quick way to financial ruin.
#1 by Matthew Swyers on July 12th, 2010
Good report. There are a couple a variants on these scams we have identified over the years. There is both the international filing scam but there is also “monitoring” scams and the like that look like official U.S. Patent and Trademark Office documents but are not.
Another big one is fraud by Chinese domain name registrars who contact U.S. Trademark holders stating that some Chinese corporation is about to register the U.S. Trademark holder’s trademark in the .cn TLD. Then the “offer” the U.S. Trademark holder a right of first refusal for some hefty price for the domain name.
Just thought we would chime in as we are always interested in receiving updates and passing them along for our customers.
Thanks,
The Trademark Company