Is this a Scam? – Invoices to Maintain your Registration

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Is this Invoice from the Patent & Trademark Organization a Scam? If you are asking this, the answer is probably yes. Over the years there has been an ever increasing number of private companies that have taken it upon themselves to offer either non-existent services or services that have no benefit to businesses registering their trademarks. The trademark scam typically starts with a very official looking letter arriving in the mail with a very official name on it like the "Patent & Trademark Agency," Patent & Trademark Organization," or "TPP – Trademark & Patent Publications." The letter mentions a real trademark application and then states that some fee is due to put it on their registry, or to block someone else from registering it on their register. Even if their register or publication exists, it provides no legal protection - it is just a vanity publication. Sometimes these fees are higher than what the person paid for their original application. These documents...
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When is a farm boy just like any other farm boy?

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When is a farm boy just like any other farm boy? That's the question at the heart of a recent Federal Circuit decision (Odom's Tennessee Pride Sausage, Inc. v. FF Acquisition, LLC, No. 09-1473) involving a decision by the USPTO to grant a trademark registration to FF Acquisitions (a SuperValu company) over the objection of Odom (a retail food conglomerate). Despite the fact that the registration in question was merely adding the body onto an already registered mark making up the torso of a farm boy (mark on the right), Odom was concerned that the mark was now likely to confuse consumers and opposed the registration, citing its own registrations. Even though Odom argued that there were other factors to be considered under the DuPont test for likelihood of confusion, the USPTO and the Circuit court summarily dispatched the complaint by noting that the registered marks differed in...
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