Attention brand owners and users of the Amazon Brand Registry: you need to be aware of a scam currently happening at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”). Scammers are submitting fraudulent requests to change email correspondence addresses for trademarks owned by other parties. As soon as the email address is changed, the scammer contacts the Amazon Brand Registry to register the trademark using the scammer’s email address. This is a relatively new scam, but it has rapidly increased in scope in recent weeks. While the first few waves of this scam affected about a dozen marks each, the USPTO caught over seventy similar attempts on Monday of this week alone.

Losing control of one’s brand on the Amazon Brand Registry can have a serious business impact. In addition to potential lost sales for any downtime on Amazon, losing the Brand Registry can prevent trademark owners from addressing counterfeit sales. It can take days or weeks to resolve and correct these issues, which can further enhance the damages felt by trademark owners.

At the present time, these scams can be difficult to prevent. The only advance notice you would have would be an email from the USPTO alerting you that a request was submitted to change the email address for one of your trademark properties. The USPTO is now aware of the scam and is reviewing change of correspondence requests, but it is not possible for them to guarantee that every scam attempt will be prevented. Older trademark properties may have unused or forgotten email addresses associated with them, and the initial email notice may go unseen.

You should regularly monitor the email accounts associated with your trademark properties so that you can spot these attempts early in the process. The USPTO has noted that the bulk of fraudulent attempts have come from AOL, Gmail, 163.com, and Zoho email accounts, but the scammers have also used slight misspellings of United States law firm names. In the case of any suspicious change, the USPTO is recommending that you quickly file a new Revocation and Power of Attorney. They are recommending that you avoid using a standard Change of Correspondence form because those forms are now being closely monitored and as a result there will be a processing delay. You should also contact the Amazon Brand Registry to request that any incorrect registration be revoked. Finally, you should contact the USPTO at teas@uspto.gov to let them know that you think one of your trademark properties might have been compromised. An unexpected notice from the Amazon Brand Registry might also alert you to this situation, and you should check the “cc” area of any email you receive because it may list a scammer’s email address.

If you have received an unexpected “Change of Email” notice, or if you think that one of your properties might have been compromised, please do not hesitate to reach out to one of our trademark and branding professionals for help in formulating a quick response.