Fraudulent requests for payment relating to Patent and Trademark applications

At regular intervals, patent and trademark applicants are confronted with fraudulent requests for payment. The fraudulent attempts are usually designed similarly, the scammers take the address data of the applicants and the relevant details of a patent or trademark application from the public registers and contact the applicants directly, requesting payment of a not inconsiderable amount (usually about € 1.000,-) for the alleged registration of their application.

Since the payment requests look extremely similar to official letters from various Patent and Trademark Offices, unfortunately patent and trademark applicants again and again fall victims of such scams. In particular the problem is that as soon as the applicants are warned of a specific fraud attempt, already new fraudulent requests for payments appear having a slightly different appearance.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has therefore now thankfully published a constantly updated list of fraudulent payment requests online, which can be consulted by applicants for reassurance that the received request is fraudulent. Additionally, WIPO recommends the following procedure:

• do not pay it!
• contact your attorney;
• for invoices relating to PCT applications, you can check WIPO's website to see whether similar notices have been received by other PCT users (this page also has links to warnings posted by certain national and regional patent and trademark offices);
• send a copy of the notification to WIPO at pct.legal@wipo.int so it can be added to the collection;
• alert all colleagues who might receive such notices;
• make a complaint to competent government authorities and/or consumer protection groups.

Dr. Rainer Beetz, LL.M.