One recent victim of scams preying on U.S. trademark filers and registrants answered a call that appeared to be from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). It wasn’t. The target of the scam was forced to change banks and monitor his credit card accounts for fraudulent transactions in the wake of that call.

Countless others have been defrauded as the result of e-mails, phone calls, fake invoices, correspondence and, in some cases, texts asking them to pay fees for trademark-related services. These bogus services include private registries or databases that seemed legitimate at the time but were actually cons.