Canadian patent agent Miriam Paton's signature was already forged on hundreds of U.S. trademark applications before she discovered what was happening. Her effort to clear her name, which she said took “a lot of phone calls and emails,” could help others who suddenly find themselves in a similar situation.  

Paton was alerted about being the victim of identity theft in June, when the Office of Enrollment and Discipline told her that she was the subject of a misconduct investigation, she said Monday during a phone interview.

Aside from investigating potential wrongdoing, the OED also registers attorneys and agents to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Paton is a registered patent agent in the U.S. and Canada. But she said she doesn't practice trademark law and has never represented any party in a trademark matter before the USPTO.

“They [the OED] saw my name on trademark applications with Chinese applicants who are obviously not located in Canada, therefore I am not permitted to represent them,” Paton said. “Their concern was wrongdoing, if I was representing people who are not located in Canada.”  

Paton declined to comment when asked why she thought she might have been targeted, but noted that her name appears on the USPTO's register of patent agents and also on all the patent applications that she represents at the USPTO.

In addition to allegedly forging her signature, Paton said the applicants also falsely identified her as a Nevada resident and connected her to bogus email addresses.

“My main concern was how to get my name off” the applications, Paton added. She said she called the USPTO and eventually was directed to the agency's Office of Policy and International Affairs, which helped her draft a declaration in which she publicly stated her signature had been forged on “several hundred trademark applications before the USPTO.”

The declaration allowed for her name to be removed from the trademark applications in question, and the OED has closed its investigation, according to Paton. She said remedying the situation took “days,” causing her to lose “a fair amount of time for work.”

“It took me a while to find the right people at the USPTO to speak with,” she said. “All the time I had to spend on it—and the worry: If they're using my name for this, what else are they fraudulently using my name for?”

The answer, at least for now and as far as Paton knows, is nothing.

When Paton was caught in the whirlwind of identity theft, she said she sought advice from Michael McCabe Jr., a lawyer in Potomac, Maryland, who represents attorneys and agents in ethics and disciplinary matters before the USPTO. He declined to discuss her case specifically, but said “fraud on the USPTO has reached massive proportions.”

“Many of those fraudulent trademark applications have been found to have been originating from China,” he added.

A USPTO representative was not available for an interview Monday. But the agency has stated the number of trademark applications coming out of the Chinese mainland increased by about 1,100 percent between fiscal years 2013 and 2018.

McCabe and other intellectual property lawyers say the spike in applications is tied to subsidies that the Chinese government has been paying to companies that register trademarks in foreign jurisdictions.

“You've got to be on the lookout for potential misuses of your name,” said McCabe, who acknowledged that being vigilant can be onerous.

“The only way an attorney is going to know if their name or identity has been hijacked is to search through the USPTO's database,” McCabe said. “For someone who does a lot of filings, that's a lot of unfortunate work to have to do.”

But he added, “It's like looking at your online bank statements to identify fraudulent charges. No one is going to tell you that information. You've got to go find it yourself.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article wrongly identified Miriam Paton as a lawyer. She is a registered patent agent in Canada and the U.S. 

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