The Finnish Patent and Registration Office reports scam messages to the police
The Finnish Patent and Registration Office (PRH) has filed a criminal complaint regarding misleading emails sent in its name. The messages contain genuine trademark registration or application numbers and ask the recipient to pay bogus fees related to them.
The letters claim that changes in legislation require national trademarks to be registered in the European register and a fee to be paid to the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). This is not true.
The sender of these messages masqueraded as the PRH, and a fake employee name was used as the signatory.Such messages can easily mislead the recipient, and the PRH considers the matter serious enough to report to the police.
“We take cases like this very seriously. We want to ensure that our customers can recognise attempted scams and know that we never request payments by email. We also share information about such cases with other authorities, such as the Cyber Security Center and the Anti-Scam Network operating in connection with EUIPO,” says Jani Päiväsaari, Director of Patents and Trademarks at the PRH.
How to recognise and protect yourself from a scam
The best way to protect yourself is to be alert and cautious.Here are some practical tips:
• Check the sender. Is the name of the authority correct and does the sender's address correspond to the correct address of the authority?
• Do not pay ambiguous fees. Read the message carefully. The authorities typically do not request payments via email.
• Do not rush. Scammers try to create a sense of urgency and pressure, but the authorities do not do that.
• Contact the authority directly if you are unsure whether the message is authentic.
You can check the valid fees related to trademarks on the authorities' own websites:
• The PRH’s pricelist and payment instructions
• EUIPO Fees and paymentsAvautuu uuteen välilehteen
• Read the PRH’s previous warning about scam messages
For further information, please contact
Tuulimarja Myllymäki
Head Legal Adviser
Email: firstname.lastname@prh.fi
Tel. 029 509 5399