While scams are constant in this day and age of the Internet, most of our craft brewery clients don’t expect to be pulled into one when registering their Brewery Name, beer names or Design as a trademark with the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office). While most scam documents are from Foreign agencies, there are U.S. based agencies (see our previous post) as well that are scouting the USPTO’s public database for your information. As you can see in the fine print from the example below, this is a private business and not part of the U.S. Government agency. They are sending you this “reminder”, in the hopes you will mistakenly pay this exorbitant fee.
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As we close down 2016, this is a reminder that as a trademark client of The Craft Beer Attorney, you will NEVER receive any outside mail or contact from anyone regarding your filed trademark unless it comes from our office directly. All official correspondence will be from the “United States Patent and Trademark Office” in Alexandria, VA, and if by e-mail, specifically from the domain “@uspto.gov.” If you ever receive a letter from any organization of which you are suspicious or of which you have a question, feel free to contact your legal representative prior to any further actions being taken.
