For some time now, there has been a growing phenomenon in the intellectual property sector: fraudulent letters requesting the payment of fees or royalties.
What do fraudulent letters look like?
Often bearing headings such as “European Intellectual Property Services”, “Registration of the international patent” or “World Patent & Trademark Database”, these letters follow the official publication of your patent application, i.e. 18 months after your first filing, or around 6 months after the international PCT extension of your application.
After 18 months, your patent application is published in public databases accessible to all, such as Google Patents. This gives access to your patent information (filing date, patent number, applicant’s address, etc.) and enables clever people to attempt to extort money from you fraudulently.
WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) has issued a public warning page for recipients of these fraudulent applications, confirming that only the International Bureau publishes PCT applications after the 18-month period has expired, and that no official fees are payable on publication. The only invoice you may receive is the one from your patent attorney accompanying the transmission of the official documents.
The fraudulent mail is accompanied by a tax invoice that includes
- the patent application number,
- the official publication number of the application,
- the title of the invention
- International Patent Classification (IPC) symbols.
In most cases, the sender is a postal address in the Czech Republic asking you to sign the document within 14 days and pay the requested amount.
What should I do if I receive an invoice that seems fraudulent?
Please note: never respond to or pay an invoice that does not come from an official intellectual property institution or from your usual firm of patent attorneys.
As a reminder, the official Industrial Property institutions are:INPI (Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle) in France,EPO (European Patent Office) in Europe and WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) in the rest of the world.
If you are a YesMyPatent customer, for example, you will only receive requests from us. We take care of sorting out fraudulent requests from official ones, and of course only contact you about legitimate requests, such as those from INPI, EPO or WIPO. No risk of being ripped off by bogus Offices!
All the more reason to trust a professional like YesMyPatent to register and manage your patents.
In case of doubt, contact your patent attorney immediately to find out how to proceed.
- Find out more on the WIPO website: https: //www.wipo.int/pct/fr/warning/pct_warning.html
