The onslaught of attacks against the Australian trade mark system has escalated significantly in late 2024 and thus far in 2025.
In December 2024 , IPTA issued a Media Alert regarding scam emails advising businesses to urgently register their trade marks, purportedly coming from practising trade marks attorneys (using the attorneys’ name, photograph and many other details in the email footer), but actually being sent by bad actors (who had inserted their phone number in place of the phone number of the legitimate attorney). Business owners alarmed by and responding to these scam emails, could be tricked into paying the trade mark application fees into the accounts of these bad actors, without any applications ever being filed. These emails still circulate today. Unfortunately, there is little that can be done to stamp out these kinds of scams, except to build awareness and encourage vigilance.
Many would be aware that in March 2025, there were mass scale bulk changes of address for service for trade mark applications and registrations, which were not authorised by the trade mark owners or their attorneys. A similar thing had happened in the European Union months before, and the motivation seemed to be that becoming the address for service facilitated access to use the trade marks on online e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Temu, which require the seller to demonstrate authorisation to use the trade mark via contact made with the address for service on the trade marks register. This highlighted an issue that Powers of Attorney are not required by IP Australia, before entering oneself as the address for service. Even if they were, these can be fraudulently produced.
And now in a recent development, it has come to light that bad actors are contacting attorneys and lawyers, purporting to represent a company that they do not represent. On their behalf, the attorney or lawyer will file a trade mark application in the name of the company they are purporting to represent. IP Australia will then examine that application, and not cite the earlier marks legitimately owned by the company they are purporting to represent (as IP Australia does not cite marks that are owned by the same entity). No one is notified of their application or acceptance. It just slips right under the radar. In this way, the bad actors can achieve acceptance and registration of a mark that is actually already taken by the company they are purporting to represent. Once they have achieved acceptance and registration, they can assign it to the intended owner and no one is the wiser or leave it as is. Either way, they then have a registered trade mark that they control and can use for various purposes, including to circumvent the registered owner requirements of platforms such as Amazon and Temu. That is, since IP Australia are now manually checking the changes of address for service for signs of scam activity, this new method of becoming the address for service for a mark that is not rightfully owned by the bad actor has evolved. Every time a platform implements a new security measure, new ways of circumventing it are coined in parallel.
If you are concerned about third parties filing marks in your name, contact us and we can take various measures on your behalf, such as setting up a worldwide watch service alerting you to all substantially identical or deceptively similar marks filed in your relevant classes, even if those marks are filed in your same name.
The level of cyber crime targeting trade mark rights, hints at the value inherent in these rights. If you haven’t previously understood the value of your trade mark assets, or put sufficient priority on protecting these assets, contact Tarr Law to start afresh with properly protecting your trade mark rights today.