Trade mark help please

P1calicious

I was sent a trademark renewal notice from the Intellectual Property Agency with all my correct info, stationary etc I signed it & sent it back It was not until they sent me an invoice for over 2k (it shoud be £200) did i think something was wrong, I called their office who only spoke French?? & said they were agents for the filing of trademarks. I then went online & saw it was the Intellectual Property OFFICE I should be dealing with. I called them renewed my trademark for the correct price & called Trading Standards immediately who told me there had been a problem with the Agency people & to write to them & tell them they had filed a report. Now 2 months later they have sent me a threatening letter saying I signed the form & therefore I owe them £448/35% or they will take legal action against me. I have reported this again to TSA but what else can I do???
Surely Its fraud to pose as another office, they had the same font, stationary, etc

VERY DISTRESSING!

pinkshoes

Write to them saying that you have already registered the trade mark at the usual price of £200, and could they send you proof with your signature on that you owe them the money. Also say in the letter that you have reported them to trading standards for fraudulently posing as another company.

fluffnutter

It's extortion. Ignore them. What will their legal action consist of? Nothing I suspect other than a couple of threatening letters. To have any hope of getting money from you, they'd need to take you to court, something that I doubt will ever happen because no court in the land would award them the victory. What do you owe them money for? Nothing. They've posed as another company, misled you into thinking they're legitimate, lied to you and demanded money from you. All of these are criminal activities. You're not breaking the law - they are.

They're no more entitled to your money than I am. If I PM you with an invoice for 2K are you likely to pay me? Didn't think so

mo786uk

Ignore it, as suggested above, they wont take you to court.

petergroves

Sadly, there are several of these scams going on - and they are not actually illegal because they make it clear in small print that the document is only an instruction form and that you can use other agencies. They rely on the fact that we are all too busy to read the small print especially when the document looks official. The Intellectual Property Office advises victims to contact Consumer Direct's specialist Scambuster team https[colon stroke stroke] secure [dot] consumerdirect[dot] gov [dot] uk [stroke] reportascam [dot] aspx (apologies, as a new user I can't post links!), which isn't much help to the victim. Consumer protection laws are unlikely to help because trade mark services are not something consumers buy. Most trade mark owners would have professionals looking after this sort of thing, but when you're doing it yourself you risk falling prey to rip-offs like this. The more publicity it gets the less chance of it happening again - but that too is little consolation ...

squeaky

Hi,

That would be... https://secure.consumerdirect.gov.uk/reportascam.aspx

Yes?