USA TRADEMARKS PATENT

After filing a patent with the USPTO, my public information was shared and I've been a target of spam emails ever since. However, recently a call came (reported as "Potential Spam" from Verizon) but I answered. It was a person claiming to be from the Patent Office, and had a very convincing request that I needed to pay the final $425 fee for completing the filing. That charge is accurate and something I do owe, so I knew that was a possibility. However, I didn't expect them to have as much detail and insight into the process and my personal information. The email they cited was from the USPTO.gov email and their number was spoofed to match the actual government number. They citing my patent serial number and directed me to the government website to provide proof of several pieces of information. I did give them my credit card after many convincing responses to my query, and I didn't see a charge come through until two weeks after. I declined it and ultimately confirmed that the charge source was a scam via this charge and this number - USA Trademarks Patent 888-343-9968. Thanks!

Same thing happened to me. I locked the credit card card and 2.5 weeks after I received an email that charge was declined. Reporting the charge and company.

Pretty scary, during the call I immediately googled the phone number and the number was listed on the USPTO official website.

My recommendation is to double check for any status update of your application on the official site: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/

Was recently a victim of this. They spoofed a USPTO number from the number 571-272-1000. Asked for $425 or else my application would be terminated - called the USPTO after and they confirmed that this is a scam. Bank statement shows a charge of $425 from "USA Trademarks Patent".

Got taken by this scam back in May. Spoofed number from DC area. Didn't realize it until months later when i received an email from USPTO stating they don't collect payment over the phone. No way to recover funds due to 60 day chargeback window.

I had the same experience. They pointed to their phone number, a (571) area code, and suggested I google it. It shows as a USPTO number, so it was definitely spoofed. I gave my credit card info and then the read through a bunch of agreement language, said that needed to affirm this and that saying "yes", which I had never seen before, and then got to the end to confirm the cost. I thought they had said $25, but he (guy with acceccent that could have been Indian/Bangladeshi/etc) said it was $425, which shows as a fee in the schedule on the PTO website. At that point I balked and he asked, "so, you don't want to protect your trade mark?", which was suspicious. He had already submitted the charge but it was rejected by Amex, which sent me an email notification that it had rejected a charge. He was on top of that and said that I needed to click the button on the email to confirm the charge. I rejected it and he went into his, "so, you don't want to protect your trade mark" pitch again. I told him that I was not going to approve the transaction and he rudely hung up to move onto the next "sucker". The charge came in as USA TRADEMARKS PATENT, but was blocked by Amex.