Retirement? Soon, but first "TradeMark Express is Changing its Name!"

Good Evening Client, unfinished business? Another 4am wake up call to write this.

This is part 4 of 4, of my retirement series. 1) April 23 https://conta.cc/4jJOPry
2) April 25 https://conta.cc/4jss77J and 3) May 18 https://conta.cc/435vrQq and May 22 https://conta.cc/3SD9gep.

Retirement? Soon, very soon but first the UGLY - "TradeMark Express is Changing its Name!”

Who are the UGLY in the trademark space?

They are the people who frankly outright lie to their clients. Stay with me here. Grasp the entire picture.

Some trademark “services” and even “dabbler attorneys” use the lure of “low fees”. They prey on ignorance of the actual trademarking process. They depend on time to cover the damage they do. They bank on “luck” that most of their victims will never have an intellectual property trademark issue. They hope you’ll forget who they are when disaster hits – years later.

What to they say about “too good to be true”? Fools? Suckers? If these firms didn’t infuriate me so much I’d have slept in today.

These firms are a dangerous choice. Start-ups trust their entrepreneurial success on a LEGALLY CLEAR name. If they ever have to change a name, it can be devastating. Rebranding can take years. The aspect of starting over causes many business owners not to try. Why go through all that again?

The fact is when you do trademarks for a living you KNOW the right way to handle any trademark is to, A) fully research the legal availability of the given company/product name, logo or slogan. This means COMPREHENSIVE LEGAL CLEARANCE RESEARCH. Then B) write a clean trademark application which will be accepted the first time by the USPTO, CIPO, EUIPO, WIPO – or any individual country. Frankly, when you go through all the steps, the trademark process is predictable and stress free. Yes, 40% of the marks ever researched are blocked. But that is the point. Respect existing business trademark and common law rights, before establishing your own.

The correct trademark process is work. Ten hours staff time. Good, reliable, updated databases cost money. Database costs of $150 to $200, even with heavy use discounts we realize. Researchers need years of experience to run comprehensive, multiple strategy reports to find similarities and conflicts. Attorneys need years of experience to analyze complicated 600–800-page reports. Application specialists need years of experience writing a trademark application and to keep up with all the changes from the differing government agencies.

Who are the "TRADEMARK UGLY"?

1) PAKISTANI TRADEMARK SCAMS – The flood of new foreign trademark web sites, seemingly 50 to 100 from Pakistan. NONE do anything to really help you. Dig deep and you’ll soon see the phoniness. These fast-moving shadows of trademark services. Their web sites are here today, gone tomorrow. Weird names. Fake addresses. (I know. I’ve gone to many. They like California!) Odd use of the English language. Foreign sounding voices, behind very American bland names. Some just wreck your trademark. Others will never let go of your credit card until you cancel it. Some will impersonate dead and retired attorneys, whom the USPTO is slowly, but systematically terminating all their filings. They text. They email with all kinds of fake ruses to get your attention and take quick action to hire them. They NEVER do any research. The few who say they do give you fake reports. Nasty! Their applications are always done badly. They will forge your signature on the trademark application. This means eventual termination, 2 years jail time and a $10,000 fine. Do they care. Hell no! A recent Google search found 7 of the 10 paid advertisers to be such firms. Does Google know they are enabling FRAUD? Do the domain hosting companies allow ABUSE?

2) TRADEMARK RENEWAL MAIL SCAMS – Since the 1990’s there has been a systematic flood of USPTO sound-like imposters spending a $1 a letter to reach you, to impress you. They will either renew your expiring 5- or 10-year trademark or offer to list your trademark in their special “directory” of trademarks. Ha! What is the worth in that? People I know in this field, attorneys and other reputable trademark services, talk as if there are multiple companies behind all the mailings. We took all the different names literally. However, just 2 weeks ago, my daughter received a single letter for her trademark renewal at our house. No other letters. Just one. I now realize all these letters are probably from the same person. Although I always heard about it from our clients, I didn’t know if they were getting multiple letters or not. Decades ago, I got letters too, but none since. My address or marks must have been scrubbed. Several times over our 33 years in business I have tried to find these companies, to no avail. They didn’t exist at the address they claimed. Very odd. A few weeks ago, a client sent us everything in the mailer, including the envelopes. I went to 5 post offices to find a postmaster who could help me. He pointed to the permit. The PERMIT tells all!

3) TRADEMARK ENGINE – Yes, an attorney owned, legitimate, USA-based trademark service, intertwined as 3 companies who engage in NEGLIGENT research practices, SCAM monitoring services, and FRAUDULENTLY signs their clients trademark applications with – SO FAR – the sanction of the USPTO. The USPTO knows about TradeMark Engine. I personally met with the USPTO Commissioner David Gooder in May 2024 and told him myself, 5 months after I informed his staff. Unbelievably this has gone on for so long. Freedom of Information request? Is a class action lawsuit needed here? Will the Texas State Government step up? See past articles, last year: 1) Feb 22, 2024, https://conta.cc/3wo1U6t, 2) March 2, 2024 https://conta.cc/3uU9Snq, and 3) March 9, 2024, https://conta.cc/3wLs1Vh. Trademark Engine is at the top of Google’s paid ads every day. They claim 35,000 5-star Reviews. Yet, Trustpilot says they have 8037 total reviews – https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.trademarkengine.com. Read the likeness of their 5-Star reviews. Read the humanness of the 1-Star reviews.

4) INCOMPETENT LEGAL RESEARCH – All research is NOT the same. There is a big difference between what is real and claimed to be “COMPREHENSIVE RESEARCH”. Don’t be fooled by those web sites who claim comprehensive research. Frankly, just look at the fees. Remember trademarks take 10 hours to do, start to finish. The database cost is $150 to $200. Do the math! Ask them. How many pages is your typical comprehensive search? When they stammer, and haw, sneeze and chortle – that means NO! No, they have no idea what legal research is. TradeMark Express reports are 600 to 800 pages combined for a typical Federal, State and Common Law search to clear a name. So, when they finally answer with a 5, 15 or 50 page, excuse laden answer, then that means NO. So, what are you paying for? The answer is, if they are not really doing the legal research, then – NOT MUCH!

5) DABBLER TRADEMARK ATTORNEYS – They should know better. The OWE you to do better. It is their ethics to DO better. Their gambit or maybe call it a surrender that you’d never hire them if they charged for what you need, is that they’ll write a good trademark application, do some research on the Internet and the USPTO web site, then IF you get a refusal from the USPTO tell you to pick a new name. The great omission here, what they do not tell you is that their extra heavy reliance on the USPTO is ignorant of the fact the USPTO by statute does NOT do a State Trademark, or Common Law search. This is 88% of the USA. For our Canadian clients, CIPO does not do a Common Law search either. IF your new trademark is really infringing, then the other mark holder has 10 years to find you and cease and desist your company. This is NOT the protection you think you are getting from this so-called wanna be trademark attorney.

Yes, I wrote an article about these guys too, see https://conta.cc/3Xbko5y.

6) TOP TRADEMARK SERVICE REVIEWS – this is an area where you’d assume the trusted source, like the magazine Consumer Reports has always been, is telling you the truth. The difference is in the past Consumer Reports had a mega-stream of supporting advertisers independent of the comparatively minor bit players in the overall scheme of things, whoever they compared products. Great integrity was demonstrated in the “how” products were tested. You’d hopefully assume the same Consumer Reports ethics is applied by today’s online critiques of trademarking services, that they too take great care in determining their ranked Top Trademark choices. But sadly, they don’t. I too was one of the hopefuls, trusting types myself. Then I happened to get the inside from one of these companies. He looked to buy TradeMark Express. He told me the story of how the rating game actually works. Firms are seemingly rated “fairly”, but those paying the most in kickback, referral or closure fees are rated at the top. The rest are window dressing to “look fair”, “credible”. Here the gambit is to top rank those firms who pay the most. Drop your fee, they drop your ranking. Nasty.

7) FAKE TOP REVIEWS – Consistently mechanical in their “prose”. Bland in their “happiness”. Polar opposite to their “anger unleashed” bad ratings. How can this be? Overwhelming oversight isn’t happening. See Trademark Engine comments, above, on Trustpilot. Which does have a staff and impressive mechanism to root out nefarious players. To which I say they are just overwhelmed. Other rating companies don’t even seem to try. Yelp is beyond “tone deaf”, more like “tone dead” to any complaint of bogus reviews. If you are in business long enough, nowadays you’ll get 3-5 emails a day to write fake reviews. The fact is, for years, that 16% of business reviews are fake.

So, what to do?

Stay tuned.

Do you want to help?

Own, control and expand your I.P. rights today with a new TRADEMARK.

For PayPal, Venmo & PayPal CREDIT see our order page at: https://tmexpress.com/order-my-trademark-paypal-venmo/.

For Visa, MC, AMEX & Discover orders call 800-776-0530 or at: https://www.tmexpress.com/order-my-trademark/.

Let our 33 years experience accomplish your overdue need to trademark – to OWN, to CONTROL, to EXPAND rights in SOUND, APPEARANCE, and MEANING – geographically NATIONWIDE. Yes, trademarks are that powerful. Why don’t you have one? two?!

Do not fall for one of the hundreds of low fee trademark scams in the USA. Be aware the trademark process takes 10 hours. Database costs are $150-$200. Do the math!