Patent & Trademark Agency LLC: Not a government agency

Got a letter from a business calling themselves the Patent & Trademark Agency LLC telling me my trademark was about to expire.

Be warned: These people are NOT affiliated with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (uspto.gov).

Their only work is to renew your trademark for you and charge you a whole lot more than if you did it yourself. According to the current fee schedule for trademarks through uspto.gov (the official government agency that handles patents and trademarks), an application for renewal should cost $400 (as of the date of this posting). The letter I received from the Patent & Trademark Agency LLC shows they will renew my trademark for $985, so they're pocketing $585.

Their address is 477 Madison Avenue, 6th Floor, New York City, NY 10022. Keep an eye out.

Here's a link I found while researching these people:

EMP&A

My notification letter looked identical to the one in the link above (but with my own information, of course).

Trademark Part II

It's official! "The Rots" is a certified registered trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. So now, every time I use the name, I can put a registered trademark symbol after it:

The Rots®

Pretty cool, huh?

And hopefully, that might deter some evildoer who wants to steal the name for their own evildoer purposes.

Hiatus

Took a bit of a break from Rotting.

It's not that we haven't been eating out, I think I've just been burning out. I've been bringing my camera in case I get in the mood, but I end up not drawing anything. With all the time I spend working, you would think I'd be making enough to live off the interest.

Still no word yet on the trademark thing. My application hasn't been assigned an attorney yet, and I'm not really expecting anything for a few more months anyway, so no biggie.

Trademark

I took my biggest step in becoming legitimate today. I filled out a trademark application for "The Rots". A little scary, especially with the money involved. It would be nice to be sure this whole adventure is going to stick around for a while! But I did it, and now I just wait for the lawyers in D.C. to give me the "thumbs up" or feed me to the lions.

Either way, they keep the money!