Hello TradeMark Express faithful. I hope to meet with someone at the USPTO when I go there in 4 weeks. Wish me luck.
I was inspired again, (as if I needed any more inspiration), while watching the Giants/Rays game last Sunday, April 14.
My mission in life seems to have come to combating the outright total scam trademark services who are exploding across the Internet right now, (many seemingly from Pakistan), but also the incompetent trademark mill services who are filing hundreds of trademarks every week without actual comprehensive legal research or any other real guidance and the unethical trademark attorneys who do the same. Their business model is to get a quick sale from you, for a very low price, then clean up their PREVENTABLE mistakes as way higher fees when the USPTO offers Office Action refusals over and over.
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What is being missed is the small business owner who has invested their life savings into their new dream business who have to pay for it all. This chills capitalism, investments and more future small business. Who is going to open a new business after being taken advantage of by so many “people”? Capitalism, trademarks, copyrights and patents exist on trust. Trust that your idea CAN BE PROTECTED and ENFORCED.
Trademarks take 10 hours of work to do correctly. Lots of expertise is needed. It takes us a year to train a new trademark researcher to legally clear any given name, logo or slogan. By statute, the USPTO cannot do this work for trademark applicants. They can only research their 3.5 million trademarks they manage. Not the other 25 million State trademarks and Common Law right holders doing business first. A comprehensive search is normally between 600-800 pages. Hard to miss.
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So, while watching Blake Snell get raked by his original team, out of nowhere came a TV commercial sponsored by the USPTO and the NCPC National Crime Prevention Council about buying low priced fraudulent products. Gray market knock offs damage capitalism, as cheaply made knock offs erode innovating prestigious products by copying their intellectual property, namely names, logos and patents. This nasty practice hurts the manufacturers, distribution networks as well as the public who thinks they are getting a great deal for the same thing. Not close. Crime itself is encouraged. Think about it. It does.
The commercial features 3 kids who order an IPad together for $49. Then the same 3 bicycle riding kids excitingly racing home after being pinged their delivery had arrived. They plug in the fake iPad. It blows up in a cloud of smoke. A fire is implied after the firefighters arrive. The kids are left distressed. The audio of the TV 30-second spot went like this:
“Here it is. Look how cheap it is. Go for it Steph! Be careful what you buy online. Counterfeit products are illegal. They are fake and can be damaging to you, your property and your wallet. Buying fake products can cost you the health of your face, skin and eyes or scar you for life. Buy the brand. Protect yourself. You’re smart. Buy smart. Go for real. Go for real. Go for real.” The last panel says “This message brought to you by National Crime Prevention Council and the USPTO. www.ncpc.org”
Here’s another NCPC/USPTO spot:
Here’s other related info at the ncpc.org:
https://www.ncpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/PSA-Social-Toolkit_9.19.pdf
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Now the USPTO wants to raise fees to cover the higher costs to deal with all the applications. I simply suggest that the USPTO takes charge of the situation. They know the scams exist. They coined the name “trademark mills”, as Commissioner David Gooder told me on a Zoom call 3 years ago. About these same issues BTW. They know way too many trademark attorneys are NOT doing their ethical job. They can see the sloppy applications and vast # of preventable Likelihood-of-Confusion refusals. The USPTO collects complaints from the public. Yes, they keep a list – but why not post the horror stories too? See: https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/protect/caution-misleading-notices.
Attorneys who do not do true comprehensive research and blindly file a trademark with such, ARE unethical. There is reason for disbarment.
Services who do not do true comprehensive research should self-identify so the USPTO can monitor them for an acceptable range of applications. In 2022, the USPTO terminated 21,000 trademarks because the services who filed were found to be fraudulent. Most if not all were from Pakistan. It would not be a first for the USPTO to protect business owners. Terminating ignorant trademark filers is not the way. (See prior blog posts on this.) We talked to over 800 of those 21,000 applicants. They felt abused. They didn’t know who to trust. Almost all refused to trademark again. Even the “bigger businesses” who we have watched over the past 2 years. They were needlessly abused by the system. The USPTO meant to hurt the bad actors. But, the bad actors have just regrouped under new names.
For the USPTO, wouldn’t it be nice NOT to write an Office Action refusal ~80% of the time? Don’t you want to be more efficient? Wouldn’t stemming the flow of garbage applications make your job easier? Don’t you want to be more in the field of intellectual property protection, instead of coming to work every day in a hazmat suit? Isn’t that the EPA’s area?
If we cannot agree to these common sense,
easily achievable ideals, then what have we?
1) Small businesses matter.
2) Trademarks matter.
3) Protecting new business ideas – names, logos and slogans matter.
4) Trust in the marketplace matters.
The USPTO needs to re-earn the business community’s TRUST, that they are protecting their trademarks too – not just their products – as they are admiralty doing in conjunction with the NCPC.
I think highly of the USPTO. These past 14 years have been a real set back for trademarks. Tell them what you think. They are asking your opinion.
If you have a small business, this is the time to have a say. Tell the USPTO what you think.You can submit comments until May 28 via the green “Submit a formal comment” button:https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/03/26/2024-06186/setting-and-adjusting-trademark-fees-during-fiscal-year-2025. This page also offers a full report summary.
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Here’s a horror story we just received on Monday:
Customer’s Statement of the Problem:
I paid a company, Trademark Proficient over $3k to perform various services. I was onboarded with this company on 7/17/2023 and became aware of the services they offered and what I agreed to contract them for. This company has had nearly $1k of my money since October but still have not filed for my three Trademark applications. I paid $250 for an e-commerce plug in back in October and we are just now as of yesterday able to purchase tickets on our website. I paid this company another $300 for PREMIUM email service. Because I have complained to them about their lack of professionalism and theft of my money for services they have not performed, they decided (as the third party administrator) to downgrade my email account to the FREE plan. The Free plan has a much much smaller storage capacity. Because I had premium I am waaay over the storage limit. This means since Friday late morning I have been unable to send/receive emails from my account. Alfred LIED and said it was due to maintenance. (No warning and in the middle of the day…) Meanwhile, I chatted with a representative from Hostinger and discovered that earlier in the day my account had been downgraded to the FREE plan. Please do. not allow these people to steal my money and hold my email account hostage; in an attempt to extort me into silence. They are scam artists!
Trying to help I did a quick competitive check on Trademark Proficient, who is trying a new business model – grossly overcharging.
Web sitehttps://trademarkproficient.com/.Their address is non-existent.
7052 Santa Teresa Blvd San Jose, CA 95139. See Google Maps:
I called408-647-1551.The person there answered“Thanks for calling. May help you?”I asked his name.“Damon”,he replied. I asked what the name of his business is? He said“Trademark Proficient. We are a law firm”, while mispronouncing the word “proficient” in his heavy Pakistani accent. I said my friend Sonya wasn’t getting any service, so therefore I went to your San Jose office to talk to you in person. I said I found there was no such address. It was a shopping center. Then I got shuttled to their“Compliance office”, where 5 minutes later I got“Nell Shivers”. Nell refused to explain why they had a fake address. Repeatedly talking over me. Then he hung up on me.
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There isn’t going to be any end to this nonsense until the industry stands up against it.
It will just get worse, until it becomes normal. Give me some stories I can pass to the USPTO when I visit them next month.
Thank you, Chris DeMassa
TradeMark Express – Since 1992 – Founder – 650-948-0530
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