A client of ours owns and runs a successful mid-size manufacturing business. He recently received an invoice that appeared to be from the US Patent and Trademark Office. He had a patent maintenance fee coming up, so he paid the invoice. The invoice was not from the USPTO.
I believed that his money had moved directly to North Korea, but I was wrong. The client tracked the invoice down to a U.S. firm that identifies patent owners with upcoming maintenance fees and just sends them an inflated invoice. Perhaps the U.S. firm would have paid the maintenance fee and kept the markup, but we’ll never know. After learning of the deception, the client demanded that the U.S. firm return his money. They initially refused, but after very real and, I suspect, very loud threats of litigation, caved and returned the money.
Remember that all files relating to your issued U.S. patent are public records. That means that anyone can see them, including bad actors. There are bots patrolling the USPTO records right now. I’ll bet that some of them are looking for fraud targets. A couple of points to remember:
1. The USPTO does not send out invoices.
2. Anything that demands that you do something RIGHT NOW or face dire consequences is almost certainly a scam.
3. If you have any questions about correspondence, either paper or electronic, that demands that you pay money or disclose information to protect your patent rights, contact us. We’ll check it out.
— Robert Yarbrough, Esq.