Trade mark renewal scam
Posted on July 18, 2016
If you or your business has trade marks (or other IP rights) registered, you may have already experienced at least one scam. (If you don’t have your trade marks registered, you really should, for lots of reasons – please talk to us.)
The scams take the form of an official-looking letter or invoice requesting payment for registering or renewing your trade mark, publishing it in an international register, or providing a monitoring service.
Most of these scams originate from countries including Hungary, Liechtenstein, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, etc. However, quite a few of these organisations have a street address in Sydney or Melbourne, hence the need for even more caution.
Typical names include ‘World Organisation for Trade Marks’, ‘Register of International Patents and Trade Marks’, ‘TM Collection’, ‘Patent and Trade Mark Organisation LLC’.
The Trade Marks Register is a publicly available and searchable database, and there is little that can be done to stop the flow of these letters and invoices. It is a serious matter, and IP Australia has some further and more detailed information here.
The communications are best ignored. If you receive something and have doubts as to whether it is genuine or authorised, feel free to give us a call or drop us an email.