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An amazing number of my clients have been receiving the following type of message:</div>
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Dear ____:</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; color: rgb(44, 54, 58);">I hope this email finds you well. The United States Patent and Trademark Office notified us that an individual from Virginia<b> [ALWAYS FROM VIRGINIA]</b> had applied for
the identical trademark name <b>[CLIENT ENTITY NAME] </b> Consequently, we have been granted a 48-hour deadline window by the USPTO to obtain ownership of this mark or else the trademark would be awarded to a third party as their intellectual property.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; color: rgb(44, 54, 58);">According to the records of the USPTO, the [<b>CLIENT ENTITY NAME] i</b>s not currently trademarked and does not appear in the United States Patent & Trademark Office database.
Under the law, if a name is not trademarked, it is considered available for registration by anyone in the United States, regardless of how long a company has been using it. The critical factor is the existence of a valid trademark; if another entity secures
the trademark before you, they will have a legal advantage over you, even if you have been using the name.</span></p>
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Please let me know if you would like to move on; if not, we will withdraw from your case and the mark will be awarded to a third party, causing you to lose ownership of it.</div>
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The email gives the name of a purported attorney, and a suspicious phone number which has an area code not matching the purported attorney address. The attorney may be real, but I suspect is not an authorized communication from that attorney. In fact I checked
on one of these on the State Bar website and there is such an attorney without a listed phone number so there is no practical way to determine whether that attorney authorized the communication. There is a logo accompanying this with of course the legal scales
of justice.</div>
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I used to receive similar inquiries from clients regarding similar threats in China. Anyone else seeing these?</div>
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Regards,</div>
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Paul D. Supnik</div>
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<p class="elementToProof" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 15px; color: rgb(36, 36, 36);"><a href="https://supnik.com/" id="OWAb794492e-bdf0-8f7f-4caf-c2af25399f75" class="OWAAutoLink" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><img alt="Paul D. Supnik
9454 Wilshire Blvd, Ste 550
Beverly Hills, CA 90212" id="imageSelected0" width="335" height="127" style="width: 335px; height: 127px; min-width: auto; min-height: auto; margin: 0px;" data-outlook-trace="F:2|T:2" src="cid:8483df6b-0e8f-4220-97e1-b250c708f13b"></a></span></p>
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<p class="elementToProof" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 7pt; color: rgb(36, 36, 36);">This message, including any attachments, may include privileged or confidential material. Any distribution
or use of this communication by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender by replying to this message and then delete it from your system. Thank you.</span></p>
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