Recently, many netizens who have applied for trademarks have said on the Internet that after receiving a courier, they paid more than 20 yuan for delivery and opened it to see a piece of flawless A4 white paper. Printed with the words "Trademark Preliminary Approval Announcement" and trademark-related information. Everyone in the industry knows that the preliminary examination announcement notice itself is worthless. You can search it, take screenshots, and download it at will in the "Trademark Announcement" on the official website of the Trademark Office of the State Intellectual Property Office. These netizens are likely to suffer from the trademark preliminary examination announcement and payment scam.

Anyone with a little experience in trademark application will know that the Trademark Office will not use express delivery to deliver the preliminary examination announcement. The Trademark Office has its own special envelope. If the Trademark Office needs to deliver documents, it will use a special envelope and send them by express delivery. The method of payment on delivery has never been used. Moreover, after May 2020, the Trademark Office will all use electronic delivery, and even express delivery will no longer be available. Therefore, if you now receive a trademark preliminary review announcement delivered by express delivery, it must be a scam.

Scams like this have existed before. But now it’s used as a trademark. In the past, everyone would receive cosmetics or clothes paid on delivery. This time it’s old wine in new bottles, just using the trademark.

Some people also raised the question: The contents of these announcements are true. Why? These announcements are all public. What are announcements? The announcement is made public and everyone can see it. Many people don’t know where to look for the preliminary review announcement. With a little care, especially industry insiders and trademark agencies, they all know where to look. Just print it out after seeing it. The things in this must be true and false, false and true.

There has always been a form of fraud in the trademark field. After a company, especially a company from other places, registers a trademark, it will receive a call from Beijing saying that it has received your company’s trademark registration information. Yes, but someone has applied for the same trademark before. I suggest that your company register a copyright. Because you registered the trademark first, you can be given priority for registration. It turns out that the agency fee for trademark registration may be one to two thousand yuan per item, and copyright registration will cost one to two thousand yuan. Then someone will call the trademark applicant and say that I am also applying for a trademark. If you don’t register it, I will register it. After I register it, I can abolish your trademark. At this time, the company was anxious and made another copyright registration. This scam has been going on for a long time. The trademark preliminary examination announcement and payment on collection are an upgraded version of this.

In fact, no matter how cunning the scammer is, he will not be deceived as long as he remembers the following points:

First, the Trademark Office will not take the initiative to call the applicant for registered trademark. After submitting the materials, if it works, it will work. If it doesn’t work, it won’t work. No more calls will be made. There are millions of trademark applications every year, and the Trademark Office has no time to call the applicants.

Second, registered trademark and copyright registration are two different things and are not combined with registered trademark. Most trademarks do not require copyright registration, unless they are commercial logos that are calligraphy and painting works.

If the trademark scam mentioned above is serious, it will constitute a crime of fraud. According to the provisions of our country's criminal law, if the crime constitutes a crime of fraud, if the crime amount is less than 500,000, he will be sentenced to a fixed-term imprisonment of not more than 10 years, and if the crime amount is more than 500,000, he will be sentenced to a fixed-term imprisonment of not less than 10 years.

Millions of trademarks are registered every year, and these scams often use big data to obtain applicant information. Don't look at how much money can be defrauded by a trademark, but a little can make a lot of money, plus there are back-ups. It is possible that it will be developed later, so that the money can be defrauded even more.

In fact, the scammers have seized on the mentality of "payment is only over 20 yuan, and the announcement is still true." It only cost a few dozen yuan, so it would be pointless to call the police. Once the police heard that someone had cheated someone out of 20 yuan, they would generally not file a criminal case for investigation.

However, if everyone reports the crime when encountering such a situation, a small amount can add up to a large amount, which will help the police to open a case for investigation and combat crime. Therefore, it is recommended that when receiving similar express delivery, it is better to call the police.