Guide · Protect yourself

Trademark renewal scams: how to spot a fake notice

If a letter or email just landed demanding a few hundred — or a few thousand — dollars to "renew," "monitor," or "record" your trademark, take a breath before you pay. A large share of these notices come from private companies that are not the USPTO, dressed up to look official and timed to make you panic. Most are technically legal, deeply misleading, and easy to spot once you know the pattern.

Published 2026-07-14 · fees verified vs USPTO

Why you got that official-looking letter

Here's the uncomfortable mechanic behind these mailings: trademark registrations are public record. The moment your mark registers, your name, mailing address, registration number, and renewal dates are published in the USPTO's open database for anyone to scrape. Private companies harvest that data and mail — or email — every new registrant a notice designed to look like an official bill.

The notices go by many labels: "trademark renewal," "monitoring service," "registration maintenance," "international registration," or recording your mark in some official-sounding "registry." Some offer a real (if wildly overpriced) service; others are pure fee collection. What they share is a presentation engineered to be mistaken for the government.

This is not rare, and it's not a sign something is wrong with your mark. Nearly every trademark owner gets these. The USPTO itself maintains a public warning page with scanned examples — precisely because the volume of these solicitations is so high.

How the USPTO actually contacts you

The single fastest way to unmask a fake is to know how the real office behaves. The USPTO communicates about your registration through a narrow, predictable set of channels — and "a letter demanding a check" is not one of them.

Official correspondence goes to your correspondent of record — the attorney or address on file for your application — not a cold mailing dressed up as a bill.
Emails come from an @uspto.gov address. Anything from a look-alike domain, a Gmail account, or a company name you don't recognize is not the USPTO.
The USPTO does not cold-call you demanding payment, and it will never ask for a credit card number, a wire, or a check over the phone.
Fees are paid to the USPTO directly through the official TEAS system at uspto.gov — never to a private company's PO box, and never by wiring money.

If a notice fails even one of these — wrong sender, a phone number to call, a check made out to a company, a PO box or overseas return address — you are almost certainly looking at a private solicitation, not a government document.

Red flags on the notice itself

Line the suspicious notice up against this checklist. The more boxes it ticks, the more confident you can be that it's a solicitation dressed as a bill:

Manufactured urgency. A looming "deadline," a "final notice," or a warning that your rights lapse in days — pressure designed to make you pay before you think to check.
A fee far above the real USPTO amount. Government maintenance fees run a few hundred dollars per class; these notices routinely ask for many hundreds or several thousand for the same filing — or for a "service" the USPTO doesn't require at all.
An official-sounding company name stitched together from words like "United States," "Trademark," "Patent," "Registration," "Compliance," "Agency," or "Office" — engineered to read like a federal body at a glance. (More on this trick below.)
A PO box, private mailbox, or foreign return address rather than the USPTO's Alexandria, Virginia office.
A request to pay by check, wire, or a card number read over the phone — payment methods the real office does not use for maintenance filings.
Fine print that quietly admits it's a solicitation. Buried on the back or in tiny type, many of these notices concede they are "not affiliated with any government agency" — the tell that it's an ad, not a bill.

The fine-print admission is your friend. Enforcement actions have pushed many of these senders to include a disclaimer that they aren't a government agency. Read every line — especially the smallest type — before you reach for your checkbook.

The name game: how they sound official

The most effective trick these companies use is their name. There's no single fake company to memorize; instead there's a pattern. Solicitation outfits assemble impressive, quasi-governmental names by combining authoritative-sounding words:

Geographic and governmental terms — "United States," "U.S.," "Federal," "National"
Subject-matter terms — "Trademark," "Patent," "Intellectual Property"
Bureaucratic terms — "Registration," "Compliance," "Maintenance," "Agency," "Office," "Bureau," "Service"

Snap a few of those together and you get a name that looks like it belongs on a federal envelope. But the name proves nothing — a company can legally call itself almost anything. The real agency uses exactly one name, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and corresponds from uspto.gov. If the sender is anything else, it isn't the office, no matter how governmental the letterhead looks.

What the real fees actually look like

Nothing deflates a scary notice faster than knowing the actual numbers. Maintaining a live registration means filing a Section 8 Declaration of Use between years 5 and 6, and a combined Section 8 & 9 renewal at year 10 (then every 10 years) — each paid directly to the USPTO, per class of goods or services.

The government maintenance fee is currently $325 per class — verify the exact amount on the USPTO fee schedule and confirm the timing on the official maintenance page. When a notice asks for four figures — or bills you years before anything is actually due — the mismatch with these real numbers is the giveaway. For a plain-English breakdown of what renewal actually costs, see our trademark renewal cost guide.

How to verify any notice in five minutes

Never take a notice's word for your status or your deadline. The authoritative record is free and public — go check it yourself instead of trusting the letter:

Look up your mark on TSDR (Trademark Status & Document Retrieval) at tsdr.uspto.gov. Enter your registration or serial number to see your real status, owner of record, and the exact dates anything is due. New to it? Our how to check trademark status guide walks the lookup step by step.
Compare the notice's "deadline" to reality. If TSDR shows nothing due for years, the urgency in the letter is manufactured.
Confirm the sender. A real email ends in @uspto.gov; a real filing is made at uspto.gov. Anything else is a third party.
When in doubt, do nothing and verify. A genuine deadline never requires paying an unfamiliar company today — it requires filing with the USPTO before your grace period ends.

If reading a registration record makes your eyes cross, that's the whole reason RenewMark exists. Our free scam-notice check helps you sanity-check a suspicious letter against the real record, and the free deadline checker shows your true Section 8 and renewal dates in seconds — no account, no email.

What to do if you already paid one

If you already sent money, you're not the first — and it may not be lost. Move quickly:

Dispute the charge. If you paid by credit card, contact your card issuer to dispute it as a misleading or unauthorized charge — the sooner the better. A check or wire is harder to claw back, so call your bank immediately if that's how you paid.
Report it to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov. Deceptive solicitations are exactly what the agency tracks, and reports feed enforcement.
Report it to the USPTO. Forward the notice as described on the USPTO's misleading-notices page; the office collects examples to pursue the worst offenders.
Verify your filing was actually made. Paying a solicitation company does not mean your maintenance document was filed. Check TSDR to confirm your real deadline is still open — and if it is, file properly with the USPTO so you don't miss it while chasing the refund.

Paying the scammer does not maintain your registration. The dangerous part isn't only the wasted money — it's the false sense that you're covered. If the notice wasn't the USPTO, your actual deadline is still ticking. Confirm it on TSDR or with our free checker before you assume you're done.

Frequently asked questions

Is a trademark renewal notice in the mail a scam?

Often, yes — or more precisely, a misleading private solicitation. The USPTO doesn't mail or email you a bill demanding payment; it corresponds through your correspondent of record and from @uspto.gov addresses. If a letter from a private company with an official-sounding name is pressuring you to pay a large fee, treat it as advertising and verify your real status on TSDR before paying anything.

How do I know if a trademark notice is really from the USPTO?

The real office contacts you through your correspondent of record and emails from an @uspto.gov address; it never cold-calls demanding payment or asks for a check, wire, or card number over the phone. Fees are paid directly at uspto.gov, not to a company's PO box. A different sender, a phone number to call, or an overseas return address means it's a third party.

Are these trademark solicitation notices illegal?

Many are technically legal but deliberately misleading. Enforcement has pushed a lot of senders to bury a disclaimer that they aren't affiliated with any government agency, which is why the fine print often quietly admits it's a solicitation. Legal or not, you're rarely required to buy what they're selling — verify what's actually due before you pay.

I already paid a fake trademark renewal notice — what now?

Dispute the charge with your card issuer or bank right away, report the notice to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and to the USPTO's misleading-notices page, then confirm on TSDR that your real maintenance deadline is still open. Paying a solicitation company usually does not file your Section 8 or renewal, so your actual deadline may still be pending.

The best defense against a fake notice is knowing your real dates. Confirm your genuine Section 8 and renewal deadlines in ten seconds — no account, no email: run your mark through the free checker →. For a brand your business depends on, a $49/year watch tracks every real deadline from the official USPTO record and flags status changes — so the only reminders you trust are the ones that are actually true.

General information, not legal advice. RenewMark is an independent service and is not affiliated with the USPTO. Fees and rules change — confirm your specifics against the official record at tsdr.uspto.gov and uspto.gov before relying on anything here.