Beware of email scams

What’s happening

Owners of U.S. trademark applications and registrations are receiving fraudulent emails that appear to originate from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) domain, @uspto.gov. These emails are a scam and do not come from the USPTO. Beware that these messages:

• Spoof the USPTO email address (e.g., noreply@uspto.gov).
• Falsely claim that the USPTO has a new policy requiring separate registration of “clients” and that there is a “penalty” for not complying.
• Provide incorrect USPTO trademark filing information (e.g., incorrect fee information).

What you should do

If you receive any communication you believe is from the USPTO, you can double check it by going to our Trademark Status & Document Retrieval (TSDR) database and entering the trademark application or registration number. Your TSDR file will show outgoing communication from the USPTO, except the application filing receipt. If the letter or email you received does not appear in your TSDR file, then with few exceptions, it is not from the USPTO.

If you have received one of these fraudulent emails or paid money in response to such an email scam, you may file a consumer complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

Next steps

Visit our solicitations webpage for a list of examples of solicitations from entities unaffiliated with the USPTO, including known scams, potentially misleading offers and notices, and other non-USPTO solicitations about which we have received inquiries or complaints. If you received a solicitation from a company not on our list, email us at TMScams@uspto.gov. Include copies of the solicitation and, if applicable, the envelope it came in, so we can assess whether to add the sender to our examples list. We do not need to be notified about companies already on the list.

Federal Agencies Tackling Trademark Scams

Some trademark applicants and registrants have paid fees to private companies while mistakenly thinking they were paying fees required by the USPTO. To combat this problem, last week, the USPTO co-hosted its first ever public roundtable on fraudulent solicitations with the Trademark Public Advisory Committee. The objectives of the event were to educate the public about the problem of misleading or fraudulent advertisements for trademark services, to learn more about what other government agencies were doing, and to brainstorm new ideas for tackling this complex issue.


The USPTO has worked closely in the past with other federal agencies on criminal prosecutions for fraudulent trademark solicitations. During the roundtable, representatives from DOJ and USPIS spoke about the recent criminal convictions in California of five individuals, including employees of a bank, who ran a lucrative trademark scam and knowingly laundered the proceeds. Two have been sentenced and the remaining three are scheduled for sentencing in August. To learn more about this case and the USPTO’s role in it, read my blog from December 2016.


To read the entire article, please visit: https://www.uspto.gov/blog/


This article is from USPTO's Director's Forum: A Blog from USPTO's Leadership.  This particular blog is written by Commissioner for Trademarks Mary Boney Denison.

Scam using the name “Patent and Trademark Resource Center, LLC.”

“Patent &Trademark Resource Center, LLC.”

The site — at http://www.ptrc.us/ — mimics the USPTO site, uses a “.us” upper level domain, and is replete with typos.  The same source has also reputedly sent out mailings.

This year another scam using “Patent & Trademark Resource Center” already appears on USPTO’s Non-USPTO Solicitations page.  Please visit this page to learn about this and other scams.

Please be caution your customers that some solicitations call themselves PTRCs.

Please visit the PTRC webpage to learn about the legitimate purposes of PTRCs: https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/support-centers/patent-and-trademark-resource-centers-ptrcs

If you or one of your customers comes across deceptive solicitations, please also alert USPTO by sending an email to TMFeedback@uspto.gov and include copies of the notice and the envelope it came in.