Wham! Bam! It's a scam!

Companies, both within Australia and overseas, continue to send sham invoices seeking payment to publish information in a "journal" for a fee. These companies monitor the official records at IP Australia and issue official-looking letters and/or invoices to trade mark applicants. The offers to publish the trade mark are not associated with any registration process, and do not provide any value to the trade mark owners.

Please be wary of any invoices which you receive which are not on the letterhead of FB Rice, or CPA Global (now part of Clarivate) if your trade marks are listed with CPA/Clarivate for renewals policing. Some of the companies offering unnecessary services include:

• International Patents and Trademarks Database (UK)
• Edition The Marks KFT (Hungary)
• Globus Edition SL (Spain)
• TM-Collection Kft (Hungary)
• Trademark Publisher GmbH (Germany and Australia)
• United States Trademark Protection Agency (USA)

We also alert you to a scam whereby trade mark owners in Australia receive emails from companies purporting to be domain name registering organisations, and advising that other traders are seeking to register domain names incorporating owner's trade marks. These emails issue primarily from Asia and encourage trade mark owners to register numerous domain names in overseas countries as defensive action.

If you have any questions or require any assistance in relation to protection of your trade marks, please do not hesitate to contact us.