A seller on the online shopping site, Wish.com, listed a sightseeing bus for sale at $15,000 but it was the $12 shipping price that raised suspicions at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

In an action, dated May 4, to cancel the trademark registration of QSEEL, Inc., the USPTO claims that the sightseeing bus listing was one of several listings on Wish.com that indicated that it was not a legitimate sale offer but was “digitally altered” and “was instead created to submit as a specimen in support of a trademark application.”

The sightseeing bus was not the only activity that the USPTAO deemed suspicious. There was also the following:

  • The seller, which was tagged Red1985, had a large variety of unrelated items for sale – exercise equipment, blenders, portable propane water heaters to name just a few – which the USPTO stated was atypical of most online sellers, and the seller used the same photos with different trademarks on the items, also deemed atypical.
  • The items bore trademarks that had been digitally altered.
  • Some listings included placeholder language, also known as “Greeking” in the graphic design community because it uses a lot of words and letters from the Greek alphabet (although not exclusively from the Greek alphabet), which has no meaning in itself, but is used to show where the actual written copy will be placed in the final design.
  • For some listings there was no price in U.S. dollars listed.
  • Some of the photos in these listings were previously used with different logos attached.

The USPTO claims these actions indicate that these items were never intended for legitimate sales but were created for the purpose of fraudulently securing a U.S. trademark.

It’s important to note that this action is not a final judgment, and QSEEL, Inc., has a period of time to respond and rebut the claims in the USPTO’s filing and defend their trademark application. They may be able to do so successfully, however, other companies – many foreign companies looking to do business in the United States – have had their trademark applications cancelled for engaging in similar practices. There is a huge foreign market for U.S. trademarks. The number of applications for trademarks has increased exponentially in the past five years, but particularly since the pandemic, most of these coming from China, Russia, and Pakistan.  The USPTO is taking this seriously, as they should, because such a burden on the application and registration system stalls the approval process for legitimate businesses.