by Frank Knizner on January 27, 2016

About five to ten times per year, we get a call from a client asking why the USPTO sent them an invoice for hundreds of dollars for their trademark applications. After a few minutes, it becomes clear what they are talking about—trademark spam.

Trademark spam ? Trademark spam is an unavoidable and unfortunate result of the information an applicant provides the USPTO in an application, which is publically available. This includes, among other information, the name, address, and email of the party applying for the mark. As a result, spammers have all of the information they need to send fake trademark solicitations that appear to be legitimate. The USPTO is fully aware of trademark spam, but despite its efforts, applicants and registrants continue to be victimized by spammers.

What does trademark spam look like ? Trademark spam generally comes in the form of official-looking correspondence—letters or email—that either “requires” the recipient to pay certain fees, or strongly “recommends” that the recipient use a particular company to facilitate the trademark registration process. In the first instance, some fees are completely fabricated, while other fees purport to be real fees, but are grossly inflated by the spammer. Here is a list of the actual USPTO trademark fees and their correct amounts. In the second instance, spammers offer their services to facilitate the registration process, something only licensed attorneys are allowed to do. To give you a better idea of what trademark spam looks like, here are a couple examples of trademark spam, one from the “U.S. Trademark Compliance Office” and another from the “Patent & Trademark Office.”

While these may appear to be official USPTO documents, both are actually spam .