As often as we warn our clients about unscrupulous companies that prey on trademark owners using notices and invoices that appear to come from government agencies, these worldwide scams continue to reap large quantities of fraudulent proceeds. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) works in a variety of ways to alert the public to these non-official solicitations. Every Office Action from a trademark examiner contains a warning and a link to the “Non-USPTO Solicitations” page, and every issued trademark registration certificate arrives with a similar warning on bright orange paper.
The Non-USPTO Solicitations page contains the names of companies of which the USPTO is aware that make their solicitations mimic the look of official government documents rather than the look of a typical commercial or legal solicitation. They emphasize official government data like the USPTO application serial number, the registration number, the International Class(es), filing dates, and other information that is publicly available from USPTO records. Many refer to other government agencies and sections of the U.S. Code. Most require “fees” to be paid. Clicking on the company name provides an image of that entity’s solicitation. Applicants and registrants have paid these private companies, believing that they were paying required fees to the USPTO.
The USPTO also cooperates with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to fight the problem. As reported on December 21, 2016, in the “Director’s Forum: A Blog from USPTO’s Leadership,” the Justice Department recently obtained guilty pleas from two California men involved in a mass-mailing scam targeting trademark applicants. Artashes Darbinyan and Orbel Hakobyan admitted stealing about $1.66 million from 4,446 trademark registrants and applicants using companies called Trademark Compliance Center (“TCC”) and Trademark Compliance Office (“TCO”). As reported by the Justice Department on December 12, 2016, Darbinyan pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to launder money and Hakobyan pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to launder money.
Read more: http://www.ilnipinsider.com/2016/12/california-men-plead-guilty-to-1-66-million-trademark-scam/
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