Explanatory video on the misleading maintenance notices that are sent with fraudulent purpose to the owners of trademarks, patents, designs or utility models that the Spanish Institute of Patent and Trademark Attorneys (COAPI) is disseminating through different social networks.
These companies use logos or anagrams that can be confused with the official names of the different national or international offices in charge of registering Intellectual Property. From the data extracted from the public registries, payment notices are sent to the owners of trademark, design or patent registrations, for the registration of their file in a database, private registry or for publication in a bulletin without legal validity. The typology of this correspondence is clearly intended to be passed off as maintenance notices regularly issued by professional representatives.
The European authorities, headed by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), have been closely monitoring these practices for years and initiating legal action in countries where the headquarters of the fraudsters can be identified and where the type of conduct and the legal coverage both allow it. At Ponti, we incorporated alerts in our communications flow long ago and we encourage our clients to contact us when they doubt about the authenticity of any suspicious notice.
