The German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) is regularly compelled to issue strong warnings about fraudulent invoices and payment demands related to patent and trademark applications.

The latest incident centers on fake invoices sent via email that bear the agency's official logo, a forged trademark certificate, and the counterfeit signature of a senior employee. The perpetrators are using publicly available registration data from new trademark and patent applications.

These are attempts at fraud that constitute criminal offenses, in which trademark applicants are asked to transfer specific amounts of money related to registration and maintenance fees to third-party accounts often with foreign IBANs.

Apart from attempts at fraud that are subject to criminal prosecution, applicants for German and European trademarks have, for some time now, been receiving an increasing number of misleading letters from unscrupulous providers of “private trademark registries,” in which applicants are asked to pay a “fee” for registration in the respective “registry”. These misleading letters are often designed to resemble official correspondence and are intended to deliberately give the impression of being “official.”

The fact that such letters are of a fraudulent nature often becomes apparent only upon careful reading of the fine print or the general terms and conditions printed on the back. Foreign bank accounts are typical listed as the details for payment of the alleged 'fees'. Such misleading letters are sent both by email and by regular mail. Again, the fraudulent senders – and there are more than 50 such entities identified so far - obtain the contact details of applicants from the public registers of the DPMA and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). Thus, both the DPMA and the EUIPO urge all applicants to check letters containing payment demands carefully before paying any supposedly official fees.

Although the authorities coordinate a defense strategy, a reliable safeguard is to maintain close contact with your patent and trademark attorney, as our team is reliably identifying such fraudulent documents and help our clients avoid falling into such traps.

External Links:

https://euipo.europa.eu/tunnel-web/secure/webdav/guest/document_library/contentPdfs/trade_marks/fees_and_payment/misleading_invoices/leaflet/Misleading_invoices_leaflet_en.pdf