Surge in Trademark Fraud Scams Overwhelms Regulators, Applicants

An unprecedented surge in applications for US trademarks has unleashed an equally extraordinary rise in fraud schemes targeting applicants, leaving investigators struggling to keep up.

A few scams have been dismantled, like the China-based network that filed hundreds of applications under a dead US lawyer’s name, and the Latvian national who bilked millions of dollars from unsuspecting applicants by creating a fake company with a name nearly identical to a government agency.

But through the first few months of this year, the US Patent and Trademark Office had already issued four times as many sanctions for fraudulent or improper applications ...