Filing Mills, Fake Specimens, and the Trademark Scam Economy
By Casey Scott McKay ·
A meaningful share of the applications filed at the USPTO every year are not attempts to protect a brand. They are the output of an industrial process that produces registrations as commodities - for platform gatekeeping, for foreign subsidy programs, or simply as a product sold to people who did not know what they were buying. This article explains how that economy works, what it does to the register, and why the resulting deadwood is a practical problem for every ordinary applicant who runs a clearance search. It covers the four main varieties of abuse, the tools the USPTO and Congress built in response, and the separate ecosystem of scam solicitations that arrive by mail looking like invoices. It closes with what a practitioner can actually do when a client is on the wrong end of one, and with the uncomfortable question of how much of the register is real.
IP and Technology > Trademarks | Article | Published 16 January 2025 - Updated 21 April 2025 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us
Summary. A meaningful share of the applications filed at the USPTO every year are not attempts to protect a brand. They are the output of an industrial process that produces registrations as commodities — for platform gatekeeping, for foreign subsidy programs, or simply as a product sold to people who did not know what they were buying. This article explains how that economy works, what it does to the register, and why the resulting deadwood is a practical problem for every ordinary applicant who runs a clearance search. It covers the four main varieties of abuse, the tools the USPTO and Congress built in response, and the separate ecosystem of scam solicitations that arrive by mail looking like invoices. It closes with what a practitioner can actually do when a client is on the wrong end of one, and with the uncomfortable question of how much of the register is real.
Keywords: filing mill · fake specimen · digitally altered specimen · us counsel rule 2.11 · unauthorized practice uspto · 37 cfr 11.18 sanctions · uspto show cause order · trademark scam solicitation · lookalike invoice · post registration audit · deadwood on the register · trademark modernization act · expungement reexamination · letters of protest · id verification requirement · section 1120 false registration · in re bose fraud · subsidy driven filings · register integrity · amazon brand registry gaming
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