Scams warning
Registration and renewal fees scams
Filing an application, advertisement of acceptance and registration, publication, or an upcoming renewal deadline can often result in requests from scam operators for ‘payment of fees’ or for you to ‘sign and return’ the notice to ‘confirm you want to renew’.
These notices can seem official and genuine, and may state that your signature or fees are required for publication, acceptance, registration or renewal of your patent, design or trade mark, or that fee payment is required for your rights to ‘appear on the register’. Sometimes notices from these companies will ask you to ‘confirm interest’ before sending their invoice, while others will be in the form of an invoice or reminder invoice. We recommend these notices are ignored. BRM attends to all fee payment on your behalf.
You may also receive emails suggesting that although a third party wants to register your trade mark as a domain name (usually in China), you can prevent this by registering your objection (for a fee, which will not be mentioned in the first email sent). If you want to reserve your domain name in China or elsewhere, we suggest you register it through a reputable domain name registration service and ignore emails that claim you need to lodge an objection. Registration of domain names is, broadly speaking, on a first-come, first-served basis.
Companies involved in domain name scams are too numerous to mention. Companies reported to send requests for payment of registration or renewal fees are listed below.
On rare occasions, official communications from a genuine Patent Office can be misdirected to you instead of to us. Please forward to us any correspondence you receive regarding your intellectual property applications and registrations (if the sender is not on the list below). We will not charge you to check a ‘scam’ request for payment.
Known scam organisations
- Commercial Centre for Industry and Trade (based in Switzerland)
- Company for Economic Publications Ltd (based in Austria)
- Company for Publications and Information Anstalt (based in Liechtenstein)
- Edition The Marks KFT
- European Institute for Economy and Commerce – EIEC (based in Belgium)
- Federated Institute for Patent and Trademark Registry (based in Florida, USA)
- Gaia Almanach LTD
- Globus Edition SL (based in Spain)
- I.B.F.T.P.R – International Bureau for Federated Trademarks and Patent Register
- INFOCOM (based in Switzerland)
- Institute of Commerce, Trade and Commerce (based in Switzerland)
- International Patent and Trademark Register (based in Nürnberg, Germany)
- IP Data s.r.o. (based in the Czech Republic)
- IPT-Register (IPT Registration s.r.o., based in the Czech Republic)
- IPTR s.r.o. (based in the Czech Republic)
- IPTD – International Patents & Trademarks Database
- IPTO – International Patent & Trademark Organization
- IT & T AG (based in Switzerland)
- ODM (Patent Trademark Register)
- Patent & Trademark Office Pty Ltd (based in Melbourne)
- Patent & Trademark Organisation LLC (based in Latvia or the US, but with a street address in Melbourne)
- Patent Trademark Bureau (based in Sydney)
- RIPT – Register of International Patents and Trade Marks
- RPT Servis s.r.o. (based in the Czech Republic)
- Search Index Registration Department – Registration of International Patent
- TM Collection (based in Hungary)
- TM-Edition Ltd (based in Hungary)
- TMP, Trade Mark Publishers (based in Austria, but with a street address in Sydney)
- WDTP – Worldwide Database of Trademarks and Patents (based in the Czech Republic)
- WIPD (World Intellectual Property Database)
- WIPO (note – this is not the genuine WIPO, but World Intelligent Property Office using a misleadingly similar letterhead and contact details)
- WIPT s.r.o. (based in the Czech Republic)
- World Trademark Register (based in Switzerland, but banking details indicate Poland)
- WOTRA (World Organization for Trademarks, based in Hungary)
- ZDR-Datenregister GmbH (based in Germany)