I filed a trademark and now I’m getting official-looking invoices

A few weeks after filing a trademark application, an envelope or an email arrives that looks like it came from the government. It has a seal, a reference number, your mark, your serial number, and an amount due. It mentions registration, publication, or a registry listing. There's a deadline. The amount is usually somewhere between a few hundred and a couple of thousand dollars.

This isn't from the USPTO. It's from a private company that read your application the day it became public and built an invoice around it. People pay these because they look real and the timing is perfect. Here's how to tell the difference, and what to do if you already paid.

Why the timing is so precise

A trademark application is a public record as soon as it appears in the USPTO's database, usually within a few days of filing. The record lists the mark, the serial number, the goods and services, and the owner's name and mailing address. Anyone can search it, and anyone can download the new filings in bulk.

The companies that send these notices do exactly that. Your serial number and filing date on the notice aren't a sign that it's official. They're on the notice because they're on the public record. The same is true of the notices that arrive around a renewal deadline years later.

Why your inbox exploded covers the other public records that work the same way.

What the notices look like

They vary, but the shape repeats. The company's name uses words like "United States," "Trademark," "Office," "Registry," or "Agency." The layout borrows from government forms. The amount is presented as a fee rather than a price. Somewhere in small print, because the law generally requires it, is a sentence saying the company is not a government agency and the service is optional.

What's being sold is usually one of:

• A listing in a private "register" or online directory that has no legal effect.
• A "publication" fee, borrowing the name of a real step in the process that the USPTO doesn't bill separately for.
• A monitoring or watch service, priced well above what the same service costs when you go looking for it.
• A renewal or maintenance filing, often years early, at several times the actual fee.

The USPTO keeps its own page on these notices(opens in a new tab), with examples.

What real USPTO correspondence looks like

The test is simple and it doesn't require reading the fine print.

• Official email comes from an address ending in @uspto.gov, and the only official websites are uspto.gov and my.uspto.gov. Hover over the sender's name to see the real address.
• Everything official is in TSDR. Any letter the USPTO sends about your application, including requests for payment, appears under the documents tab for your serial number in the Trademark Status and Document Retrieval system. If a notice isn't there, it isn't from the USPTO.
• Fees are paid to the USPTO through its own payment system, at the amounts on its published fee schedule. The office doesn't ask for a wire transfer, a gift card, a check to a third-party address, or payment details by phone or text.
• If you have an attorney, the USPTO writes to your attorney. A notice that reaches you directly, addressed to you as the owner, with no copy to your attorney, is almost certainly not official.

The government's actual costs are the filing fee, a maintenance filing between the fifth and sixth year, and a renewal every ten years. There is no fee for being listed, published, or monitored.

What to do with one

Don't pay it. Keep it. If you want to check, look up your serial number in TSDR; if the notice isn't among the documents, you have your answer. If your application hasn't been assigned to an examining attorney yet and you're unsure about an email, the USPTO's Trademark Assistance Center will tell you whether it's theirs.

The USPTO asks that spoofed websites and suspicious notices be reported to TMScams@uspto.gov. In the US, you can also report the notice to the Federal Trade Commission.

If you already paid

• Call your bank or card issuer and ask about disputing the charge. The sooner the better.
• Keep everything: the notice, the envelope, the receipt, any emails.
• Report it to the USPTO address above and to the FTC. Reports are how these get stopped, and the USPTO's page exists because enough people filed them.
• Check TSDR to confirm nothing about your application changed. If you get an email-change alert from TEAS@uspto.gov that you didn't request, reply to that mailbox and say so.

Paying one doesn't affect your trademark. It cost money, not rights.

What this looks like on this site

Notices styled to look official have their own category. The records there show the same features every time: a domain registered shortly before the first notice went out, a name that borrows an official-sounding word, and authentication that passes, because the sender set it up correctly. Why this email passed every spam check explains why a pass says nothing about who's behind a domain.