I wrote some time ago about an offer I received to pay a fly-by-night outfit $1700 so that a client’s published PCT application could be included in a private database that contained information already freely available from WIPO. While IP professionals can readily recognize such ruses, it seems that enough non-professionals fail to ferret out such fakery that it continues to be worthwhile for fraudsters to foment their forgeries: WIPO has a page on its website listing about two dozen names under which such scam artists have been seen to operate in the PCT sphere.
It should perhaps come as no surprise that such trickery is tried in trademark territory too, although WIPO’s warning regarding analogous activities with respect to the Madrid System is considerably shorter than the warning regarding PCT applications. An example: the “Triangle-K” appears on many food items in the United States, and is the subject of European Community Mark No. 02899144. The mark is due to be renewed by the end of October this year; the mark holder was recently sent the letter below (click on the pictures for larger images). Unlike the faux PCT database letter, this letter offers an actual service, namely renewal of the subject mark. Not that that mitigates the sliminess of the organization, which calls itself "Intellectual Property Agency Ltd.": the price quoted for the renewal, 2900 Euros, is nearly double the actual renewal fee (and more than double if the fee is paid electronically); the mark holder is already represented by counsel before the OHIM; and the best reason I can surmise for listing the company’s address on the front page of the letter as a Brussels address but listing the address in the fine print on the back as being in Seychelles is to lure the unsuspecting into thinking that this is a legitimate organization associated with the EU. The terms of the agreement are also fairly draconian. What saved the mark holder from agreeing to pay was the fact that the person who received the correspondence was a lawyer who had enough sense to ask an IP attorney if the letter meant anything, but presumably there are enough unwary mark holders out there to make this venture a profitable one for its proponents.
Update: I just saw a post on the IPWatchdog site about a similar notice sent to Gene Quinn, the proprietor of that site and the owner of the IPWatchdog mark.