Friday 11 May 2012

Another business scam

Received through the post this morning was a rather obvious scam "reminder" to renew one of our trademarks. It comes from the "Intellectual Property Agency Ltd" based in the Broadgate Tower in London. It has the typical grey fine print on the back in contractualese which boils down to them wanting to con you into paying an excessive fee for renewing a trademark. Note there are no refunds. Their contract for UK Trademarks is oddly based on Swedish law. Here's their web site. They do not appear on the UK Companies House web site.

Their form look official and has a name similar to the official government body who handle these things. It is clearly designed to fool a dumb clerk or a dumb manager.

Using the proper government agency is a much lower cost to renew the trademark. There is not much use in complaining to any government authorities though; they will just wring their hands and do nothing. This problem won't go away until a law is passed telling the scamsters that they'll go to prison for a minimum of 5 years.

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