More and more Intellectual Property owners are receiving
solicitations from those who seek to exploit their Intellectual
Property.
These solicitations come in the form of correspondence or
invoices that may contain images of patents or trademarks, contact
information, registration numbers and other information all of
which appear very authentic, but are deceiving. The information
identified in these solicitations is easily derived from the
publically accessible Canadian Intellectual Property Office (the
"CIPO") online databases and other
intellectual property databases around the world. These
solicitations, allegedly from government organizations, request the
payment of bogus fees for publication of a trademark application,
or it might offer legal services, request a hefty fee to renew a
trademark registration, assist with the payment of maintenance fees
for patents, offer monitoring services or even provide deceptive
and misleading marketing practices relating to
