What’s happening Bad
actors are making unauthorized changes to attorney information using
Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) withdrawal and revocation
of attorney forms by:
- Signing the attorney of record’s name
- Resetting the correspondence address to the applicant’s address in the initial application
- Replacing the primary correspondence email address with the bad actor’s email address or deleting the email address
What we’ll do When we receive a request to change the primary email correspondence address of record, we’ll send an email to the prior primary email correspondence address to alert the attorney. Look for an email message from TEAS@uspto.gov
with the subject line "Alert USPTO Change of Email Address" notifying
you of changes to the primary email correspondence address in your
cases.
What you should do
- Monitor your cases for unauthorized changes
- Turn on email notifications for your MyUSPTO.gov trademark docket
- Report unauthorized changes using these instructions
Keep contact info updated Bad
actors appear primarily to be targeting registrations that don’t
include a correspondence email address. You won’t receive a change of
address alert if you don’t have a correspondence email address on
record. Avoid this problem by ensuring that your registrations contain
current contact information.
Future plansWe’re implementing a login requirement this fall to combat this problem.