What To Do If You Already Paid
Concrete steps if you have sent money or your filing was made by a service you no longer trust.
If you have already paid, the priority is your trademark rather than the money. Money is sometimes recoverable; a lapsed deadline usually is not.
Check your actual status first
Look up your serial or registration number in TSDR. Confirm what has genuinely been filed, what the real deadlines are, and whether anything is outstanding. Do this before chasing a refund — a missed deadline is the expensive problem.
Check who is on the record
TSDR shows the attorney and correspondent of record. If someone you do not recognise is listed, they are receiving your official correspondence, which means you may not be seeing your own deadlines. An attorney can file to change it.
Dispute the payment
Card payments can often be disputed, particularly where the service was misrepresented. Bank transfers are usually not recoverable. Act quickly — dispute windows are limited.
Report it
Reporting matters even when recovery is unlikely: patterns of solicitation are acted on when documented. The USPTO collects examples of misleading notices, and the FTC and IC3 accept fraud reports.
Get a real attorney to look at it
If a filing was made badly or by someone unauthorised, an attorney can tell you whether it is salvageable, whether to refile, and what the deadlines now are. That assessment is worth paying for.
Quick checks
- Verify real status and deadlines in TSDR
- Check who is listed as attorney and correspondent of record
- Dispute the charge if it was paid by card
- Report the solicitation
- Have an attorney assess whether the filing is salvageable
Official sources
- USPTO TSDR — check your real status and deadlines
- USPTO: Caution on misleading notices
- USPTO: official fee schedule
Why we do not name companies
These pages describe patterns, not businesses. Some senders of these solicitations are outright fraudulent; others are technically legal private services whose marketing is merely misleading. Telling them apart requires evidence we do not have, and calling a named company a scam is a statement of fact about an identifiable business.
Recognising the pattern protects you just as well. Where a specific operator matters, the USPTO publishes examples of misleading notices and its own sanction decisions — USPTO: Caution on misleading notices.