The Latest in IT Security

Trademark Rogue Business

01
Oct
2011

There were a couple of letters on my desk this morning. They were invoices for a Trademark Patent for one of our products.

The first one is from the Worldwide Database of Trademarks and Patents (WDTP):

(click to enlarge)

The second one is from the USA TradeMark Ent., INC

(click to enlarge)

The WDTP letter was sent from Brno (Czech Republic):

The USA TradeMark letter was sent from Budapest (Hungary):

These are well executed phishing scams from Eastern European scammers. Unfortunately for us, such scams aren’t just in our email inbox.

Those guys are after the big bucks:

It is quite impressive to see the amount of efforts they have put into this. It goes from legitimate looking letter heads, websites etc… Speaking of which, let’s take a quick look at them:

hxxp://www.wipd.biz/

IP address: 217.198.114.236

Location: Czech Republic

hxxp://www.wdtp.biz/

IP address: 217.198.115.47

Location: Czech Republic

A common email address shows up for both: [email protected], and both domains were registered via joker.com.

This scam has been going on for several months (a post on this blog talks about it back in January 2011).

Why is this still going on? Maybe because those businesses are covering their bases (for a lack of a better word).

A quick look at hxxp://trademark-us.com (IP address: 92.43.201.58, Location: Hungary, Registrar: Joker.com)

and in particular at that sentence: “Our primary business activity is to publish the TM Selection; a yearly, unofficial, but international catalog of newly registered trademarks.

In other words: “If you’re stupid enough to buy our bogus trademark, then it’s not our fault”.

I can’t imagine how many firms receive such letters and pass them on to their accounting department.

This is one very lucrative (and yet fraudulent) business.

Jerome Segura

  1. Aud May 8, 2012

    I received this letter too, for $960. In fact, last week I received an “order” to my online shop from a well known US American scammer, a female actually.

  2. Louise Rouse January 25, 2013

    I received a invoice for 2,327.00 for being published in a so called Gazette, I do remember getting a junk mail asking me if I wanted to be listed , and throwing this away, I did not apply, respond,talk to anyone on the phone showing any interest in being published in this so called Gazette,. Beware this is a scam. please post if you received a letter also.

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