Recent renewal notices from “Stern Young & Partners Intellectual Property” offer trademark renewal services with high fee charges.
The Recycler trademarks are due for renewal in the new year and we recently received a renewal notice sent by “Stern Young & Partners Intellectual Property”, who are not our IP agents.
It is normal to receive a reminder from EUIPO, the European Union Intellectual Property Office that your trademark is set to expire in the next 6 months or so.
Ben Evans of Blake Morgan LLP wrote in 2019: “ It is not unusual for trademark owners to be sent such renewal “offers” or indeed other such invitations to provide unrequited services (registration of a mark in a private journal for example) and, in doing so, for the legitimate representatives to be bypassed, often to the detriment of the trademark owner. What is different in this case is that the sender appears, based on the name of the organisation, to be a firm of IP practitioners. Further research suggests that, in fact, Stern Young & Partners is not regulated by IPReg (as one might expect), nor indeed the SRA, rather this is a company incorporated in December 2018 that lists its offices at 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden – one of 27,656 companies registered to that address.”
You can see the letter we received here, regarding THE RECYCLER trademark which is due to expire in March 2021. The fee that they want to charge is £2,189 (€2,445 / $2,900) plus VAT. If you do the renewal online at the EUIPO website the fee, for THE RECYCLER renewal is €1,050 ($1,245 / £935).
If you renew your trademark with Stern Young & Partners they will earn £1,254 (€1,407 / $1,670) for 10 to 20 minutes work.
Note that the business address at the bottom of. The letter is the same address as a Mail Boxes Etc store (no connection). An odd arrangement for a company that will earn £1,254 (€1,407 / $1,670) for 10 to 20 minutes work.
For the record: Renewing your trademark online at the EUIPO website is simple and took our researcher 5 minutes to find our registration and another 10 minutes to get everything sorted and cost a cup of tea and biscuit.
That said, if you are planning to register a trademark, you should consult a suitably regulated firm of IP specialists.
