Robert Wack

I wasn’t planning to write on this topic again so soon, but I guess the state of the world is such that it can’t be avoided.

I recently needed to avail myself of the services of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, using their online portal. First, what a wonderful service! Kudos to the hardworking Federal employees behind the customer friendly, easy to use, intuitive user interface for that process. As to why I was there, more about that later in a future post.

Anyway, after I finished and paid my fee, I received two confirmation emails. The first was the usual “Your application was successfully submitted and received. You’ll be hearing from us, etc.”  The second was a longish one about scams, beware, people may contact you purporting to represent USPTO, etc.  I skimmed it, filed it away, and didn’t give it another thought.

Then, three days later, I receive an email supposedly from USPTO saying my application is ready for the next step, there will be fees, this must be done soon, you will only have one chance, blah, blah, blah.

I have to admit, for a moment I had dual thoughts of, ‘wow, they are fast’ and ‘damn, more fees?’.  But then I noticed the sender email address –  not a uspto.gov address.  Wait a second, I think to myself, and go back to the scam info email from USPTO.  Upon closer reading, they give a detailed list of all the stuff scammers might try. Sure enough, this one ticked many of the boxes: sense of urgency, a detailed attempt at creating legitimacy, lots of legalese, and specific instructions about additional information that had to be submitted, including, wait for it, my Social Security Number and bank information!  Then I started noticing even more red flags –  misspellings and grammar issues, like “providing the “EIN” no could save time from the verification.”

According to the REAL USPTO, some of these scammers may end up trying to call me or send snail mail with official looking documents. I guess the email scammer did me kind of a favor by tipping me off so soon after the USPTO sent me the warning email.

But dealing with this relentless criminality is exhausting. I guess it just doesn’t end, does it?