On January 25, 2022, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued sanctions against a group of trademark filing entities (“TFEs”): Abtach, Ltd., 360 Digital Marketing LLC, and Retrocube LLC, including the officers – Azneem Bilwani, CEO, Salman Yousuf, COO, Muhammad Saad Iqbal, President of Abtach, and Irsa Faruqui, President of Retrocube (collectively “Abtach TFEs”). Abtach is the parent company, and IT company based in Karachi, Pakistan. 360 Digital is a brand and website design company based in Dallax, Texas. Retrocube is a mobile app company also based in Dallas, Texas. Bilwani and Iqbal are based in Karachi, Yousuf is based in London, Great Britain, and Faruqui is based in Dallas.
The sanctions order is based on the order to show cause (“OSC”) issued by the USPTO on November 3, 2021, in which the Abtach TFEs were found to have engaged in unauthorized practice of law and committing fraud upon the USPTO by filing false and incorrect information on the trademark applications in which the Abtach TFEs filed on behalf of nearly 5,500 unsuspecting applicants. The Abtach TFEs used several websites to lure these applicants with advertising of, among other things, rock-bottom trademark filings, some for as low as the incredulous fee of $49. When the applications were filed through TEAS, the Abtach TFEs then falsified the filing receipts showing the USPTO filing fee rather than $225.00, but as $776.00, and invoiced the applicants for the higher amounts. This falsification of USPTO records is in violation of the USPTO Rules of Practice.[1] Also, the Abtach TFEs used improper email addresses for the owner’s email addresses. The actual email addresses were fictitious Abtach email addresses. So, any correspondence from the USPTO, like an office action, would be sent to the Abtach TFEs, who would then doctor the USPTO document, and resend the doctored version the true owner, usually invoiced at a higher amount. Further, because the Abtach TFEs conducted its activities outside the aegis of a licensed U.S. attorney, it constituted unauthorized practices of law.[2]
The sanctions include preventing the Abtach TFE officers from filing any trademark documents with the USPTO, including terminating their USPTO.gov accounts. However, also included in the sanctions is the order to terminate all of the 5,500 applications in which the Abtach TFEs filed. This affects these 5,500 potential trademark applicants, and in some cases, there would be no way to know absolutely that these applicants would have notice their applications have been terminated because the Abtach TFE incorrectly filed contact information for these applicants to re-direct to an Abtach TFE email address rather than the true owner. Presumably, the USPTO will send a phyiscal copy of the OSC and the sanctions order to the mailing address indicated on the application.
This sanction order is part of the USPTO’s comprehensive effort at combatting trademark fraud. If there are any applicants affected by the Abtach TFEs’s scam, please feel free to contact Yonaxis IP Law Group with questions on how to re-file their applications. The USPTO also has information on how to re-file the applications on its site.
[1] See 37 C.F.R. §11.18(b).
[2] See 37 C.F.R. §§2.17(a), 11.5(b), and 11.14(a).