What the USPTO Will and Will Not Do
A short reference for checking whether a message is genuinely from the trademark office.
Most scam messages fail against a handful of simple facts about how the USPTO actually operates. This page is the reference to check a suspicious notice against.
It will not ask you to pay a third party
Every official fee is paid to the USPTO directly through its own system. No genuine notice asks you to pay a private company on the office's behalf.
It will not email you from a non-government domain
Official correspondence comes from uspto.gov. Lookalike domains — extra words, hyphens, different endings — are the single most common tell.
It will not threaten immediate loss without a real deadline
Real deadlines are visible in TSDR against your serial number. If a notice claims an imminent deadline that TSDR does not show, the deadline does not exist.
It will not sell you monitoring, publication or directory listings
The office examines and registers marks. It does not operate a watch service, publish paid directories, or offer "international registers" with legal effect.
It will not phone you demanding payment
Unsolicited calls pressing for immediate card payment on a trademark matter are not the USPTO.
Quick checks
- Sender domain is exactly uspto.gov
- The deadline appears in TSDR
- Payment goes to the USPTO, not a company
- You are not being sold a directory, register or watch service
Official sources
- USPTO TSDR — check your real status and deadlines
- USPTO: Caution on misleading notices
- USPTO: official fee schedule
Why we do not name companies
These pages describe patterns, not businesses. Some senders of these solicitations are outright fraudulent; others are technically legal private services whose marketing is merely misleading. Telling them apart requires evidence we do not have, and calling a named company a scam is a statement of fact about an identifiable business.
Recognising the pattern protects you just as well. Where a specific operator matters, the USPTO publishes examples of misleading notices and its own sanction decisions — USPTO: Caution on misleading notices.