As IP professionals, we are consistently advising our clients to register their Trade Marks and to take control of their brand – see Don’t Risk It, Register It! Why Trade Marks Are Your Brand’s Best Defence.
However, here at Ellisons we have also noticed an ongoing trend of dishonest practices that are designed to instil panic for business owners and may lead to them becoming the victim of a scam.
Many business owners and/or their senior leadership team are receiving emails from ‘IP Experts’ that purport to be the last chance to register or salvage their brand. In this article, I have described some of the emails that we have seen and why they can be safely ignored.
Please note, this email relates to the UK Trade Mark Register only.
The ‘They have asked, but I prefer you…’ Email
How to Identify it
There is a growing trend of businesses with unregistered Trade Marks to receive an email that contains the following elements:
- I have been instructed to register the trade mark of [Business Name Limited]
- But if you pay me money now, I’ll register it for you instead.
- I am a registered solicitor and my credentials are [SRA/other regulatory credentials] and here is a link to verify.
- If you say nothing or don’t pay me money now – I’ll register your brand for someone else.
These emails are getting better and are often wrapped in a corporate style, with an email footer for a law firm. Furthermore, in several we have seen the SRA or regulatory link is entirely legitimate and the credentials match a real professional.
How you know it is not legitimate
The first major give away that this is not from a legitimate solicitor is the process of instructions. For a host of regulatory reasons, no solicitor will take instructions from one party, review the information and disclose it to a third party to gain a client. On instructions for a Trade Mark registration, we will conduct feedback and provide that back to our client, but under no circumstances would we reach out to a party with the same name to offer them preferential treatment.
Other, slightly more discreet, giveaways include:
- The registration of the full company name (including ‘Limited’) rather than a brand identity;
- The Solicitors identified in the email do not appear to have any affiliated firm; or
- The Law Firm cited in the email has a non-existent or untrustworthy email.
The ‘Register your Trade Mark! Again…’ email
How to Identify it
Not unfamiliar to any business that has registered a Trade Mark is the emails received notifying a business owner that they should register their trade mark. These emails will often appear shortly after a business has made a legitimate Trade Mark application. Far simpler in both composition and style these consist of something to the effect of the following message:
You need to Register your Trade Mark [Trade Mark that you have already applied for] using this link! [Generic Link].
These emails are often sent shortly after the Trade Mark application has first been published on the Trade Mark Register. At which time, individuals may get the companies basic details and the Trade Mark that they are seeking to register, which is why these emails often appear to be quite detailed.
How you know it is not legitimate
These emails can, broadly speaking, be ignored for one simple reason. There is only one Trade Mark registry in the UK. In order to be able to enforce a Trade Mark this is the only register that it needs to be on.
The link to search the Trade Mark Register can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/search-for-Trade Mark
Any other site or service purporting to be the ‘official’ Trade Mark Register in the UK is not necessary and range from useless to out right scams.
Please note, none of the above is referring to actual IP monitoring / registration services, these are often legitimate services that monitor IP enforcement on your behalf. In the event that you should receive an email on Trade Marks that you are unsure of, we would suggest that you scrutinise the email before paying for any services or clicking on any third party links.
If you remain unsure on whether your trade mark is at risk, or if you would like to talk through your options for protecting your brand, the Ellisons Commercial Team would be happy to discuss this with you.
