Registered a trademark in the Benelux? Beware of Trademarkpublisher.info invoices!
If you own a domain name with a generic extension (.com, .net. org, .info, .biz), you’ve probably already received letters from Domain Registration of America. They look like invoices for domain registration renewal, but are in fact requests for domain transfer – if you sign and pay you’re stuck with their higher fees.
A similar controversial business is being run by Trademarkpublisher.info, sending out invoices to trademark owners. I received an invoice of €795 (for a Benelux trademark that I no longer own).
If you read the terms and conditions (pdf), you’ll notice that the actual service they sell for this hefty price is the “publication” of your trademark. Which is kind of… unnecessary, since your trademark is already published by the Trademark registration office itself.
The blog posts I found about Trademarkpublisher.info all seem to be Australian. Apparently they have now expanded their “market” and bought an old (it’s already 5 years since I transferred ownership) database of Benelux trademark owners… The letter (pdf page 1, 2 and envelope) looks like a (perfectly bilingual) Belgian invoice, and they have a Belgian Bank acount (while registered in Vienna, Austria). If you or your company received one of these, just be aware that this is not an invoice for renewing your trademark registration…
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