One of our clients forwarded us another trademark warning email this week. This time it came from a company calling itself Trademark Center UK, under the subject line “United Kingdom Brand Registration Profile”.
Their message to us was refreshingly simple:
“Looks like spam, should I ignore?”
Yes. But I want to walk through why, because we are seeing more and more of these, and this one in particular got under my skin.
Emails. Letters. WhatsApp messages. Fake invoices. Fake renewal notices. Fake “urgent filing” warnings. They are getting more frequent, and they are getting more aggressive.
What makes this example worse than most is the footer. It appears to use the name of a respected intellectual property solicitor who sadly passed away in 2024. For me, that crosses a line that needed calling out.
The email
The email was sent from tim.bamford@trademarkscenter.uk, under the subject line “United Kingdom Brand Registration Profile”. Here is what it said, word for word:
Dear [REDACTED],
I hope you are well.
This correspondence serves as a final reminder concerning the trademark position connected to [REDACTED] within the United Kingdom.
As outlined in our earlier communication, a separate party has approached our office seeking to proceed with an application for this branding through the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO). Due to your established commercial presence and prior market use, your business was temporarily placed on priority review status. However, this position cannot remain reserved indefinitely.
Please be aware that the UKIPO operates under a strict first-to-file framework. In practical terms, the first applicant to successfully submit and secure registration may obtain exclusive nationwide rights connected to the branding.
Should the competing submission proceed ahead of yours, this could potentially expose your business to:
- Trademark infringement allegations under Section 10 of UK trademark legislation
- Formal cease-and-desist correspondence
- Court proceedings and associated liabilities
- Forced replacement of branding, domains, signage, printed materials, and customer-facing assets
- Significant operational disruption and commercial expenditure
Given the current position, we would strongly advise against delaying this matter further. Once the competing filing advances beyond a certain stage, available remedies may become considerably more restricted.
We kindly request your response within 24 hours should you wish us to place your application on immediate priority filing status.
For further clarification, you may reply directly to this email or contact our office on [REDACTED].
We look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
The footer then gave the name Tim Bamford, Intellectual Property Lawyer, alongside branding for Trademark Center.
The pressure tactic, in plain English
Strip away the formal language and the email does four things:
- Tells you someone else is about to register your brand.
- Tells you that you have been given some kind of “priority” status, which is now running out.
- Warns of legal action, rebranding costs and commercial disruption if you do nothing.
- Demands a response fast, in this case within 24 hours.
Create urgency. Create fear. Offer the solution. That is the whole formula.
If you work in trademarks every day, the alarm bells ring almost instantly. But if you are an SME and this lands in your inbox for the first time, it can be genuinely frightening. That is exactly why it works. It is built to make you panic before you have had the chance to check whether any of it is real.
For the record, a real “first to file” point exists. The danger here is that a kernel of truth is wrapped in invented urgency and a threat that doesn’t actually apply to you.
The name used in the footer
This is the part that made this one sit so badly with me.
The footer used the name Tim Bamford and described him as an intellectual property lawyer. There was a genuine, highly respected IP solicitor of that name. CITMA published an in-memoriam recording that Tim sadly passed away in April 2024.
I want to be careful here. We do not know who is actually behind Trademark Center UK, and we are not in a position to say why this name has been used. But if the intention is to suggest a connection to the late Tim Bamford, that is about as low as this gets.
Here is the practical danger. A worried business owner could search that name, find a real and respected IP lawyer, and conclude the email must be legitimate. That is the trick these scams rely on: they borrow credibility from real names, official-sounding terms and legal language, then bolt it onto urgency and fear.
We thought hard about whether to name him at all. Nobody wants to pull a respected professional into a scam warning. But the uncomfortable truth is the name is already in the correspondence, being put in front of business owners. Staying quiet doesn’t protect anyone. It just leaves the next recipient more likely to search the name, find a genuine lawyer, and be misled.
So, to be completely clear: this is not a criticism of Tim Bamford. Quite the opposite. The point is that seeing a real professional’s name on an email does not make that email genuine, and in this case the name appears to belong to someone who passed away in 2024.
What we can see about Trademark Center UK
The details don’t line up, and that is usually the first tell.
- The footer gives the company name as Trademark Center and the website as trademarkcenter.co.uk.
- The email itself was sent from trademarkscenter.uk (note the different spelling).
- The footer lists a London phone number, a London address, the title “Intellectual Property Lawyer”, and branding designed to look professional.
The polish is the point. This is a step up from some of the recent examples we have seen, which leaned on mobile numbers. A landline and a tidy footer feel more credible to a recipient. It doesn’t make the email genuine. It just makes it more convincing.
We have seen this pattern before
We recently warned about similar emails involving Prestige Marks and Trademark Axis. The approach was almost identical:
- A business is told someone else is trying to register their brand.
- The sender claims the business has temporary “priority”.
- The message warns of serious consequences.
- The recipient is pushed to respond quickly.
- The sender offers to file a trademark application as the solution.
The Trademark Center UK email follows the same broad pattern. The main differences are the company name, the contact details and the name in the footer.
We are not saying these are definitely the same people. We are saying the similarities are hard to ignore.
You can read our Prestige Marks and Trademark Axis warning here.
Why this one made us angry
I’ll be honest, we are not being dramatic when we say this is upsetting.
Our clients, and SMEs across the country, work hard to build their brands. They don’t need to be frightened into thinking they are about to lose their business name over a misleading email. They don’t need fake urgency, legal-sounding threats from people they have never heard of, or the name of a real, respected professional used in a way that could mislead them.
This is not harmless spam. These emails cause real stress, real confusion and, for some people, real financial loss.
Our client did exactly the right thing
They didn’t panic. They didn’t call the number. They didn’t reply. They forwarded it to us and asked whether it looked legitimate.
That is the safest thing any business owner can do.
If you have a trademark representative, send anything suspicious to them before you act. If you don’t, get a second opinion before you reply, sign anything or part with any money.
What to do if you receive one
If an email lands from Trademark Center UK, Trademark Center, or any company telling you another party is about to register your brand, take a breath. Before you respond, ask:
- Is the company a recognised trademark representative?
- Is the person named in the email real, and genuinely connected to that company?
- Does the sending email address actually match the business it claims to be from?
- Does the website clearly identify the legal entity behind it?
- Does the threat even make sense? Is there really a competing UK trademark application?
- Do you already have trademark protection in place?
Most importantly, don’t let a 24-hour deadline rush you into acting without checking. A genuine issue will survive a bit of due diligence. A pressure tactic depends on you skipping it.
Trademark scams don’t only arrive by email
They turn up by:
- Post
- Phone call
- Fake invoice
- Renewal notice
- Publication notice
- Urgent legal warning
It is one of the reasons more of our clients are using our Care of Address service. When trademark correspondence comes through us, we can help separate the genuine UKIPO notifications, real deadlines, renewal reminders and opposition or objection correspondence from the junk that should be treated with caution.
Business owners shouldn’t have to become scam investigators just to protect their brand. That part, we can help with.
Have you received a Trademark Center UK email?
If you have had an email from Trademark Center UK, Trademark Center, or anyone using the name Tim Bamford in connection with trademark registration, we would genuinely like to see it. We are building a clearer picture of the companies, websites and email patterns being used, and the more examples businesses share, the easier it becomes to warn the next person.
As always, if in doubt, ask questions first and reach for your wallet second.
Part of The Trademark Helpline scam directory. If you’ve spotted a trademark scam, forward it to us and we’ll add it to the warnings here.
