Copyright and Trademark Scams and Warnings

What To Look Out For and Why To Use Alpha American

Service Fees

Many Internet-based companies will wait until you invest your time finishing their lengthly questionaire before giving you their price and not give any indications before then. Then once you see the bill, you cringe, and eventually give in to it because you spent all that time on the questionnaire.

We give you a downloadable form so you can see what there is to fill out in addition to all our prices up front. Oh, and did we mention our prices are the lowest around?

Discounts

Some sites use unfair claims that they give you a large percentage off of regular legal fees when they don't mention anything about the lawyer actually doing the work or that the lawyer is a multi-millionaire and the savings is based on that laywers fees. And in most cases, there are no lawyers.

Alpha American is not a legal firm, but we are well educated to provide the services we offer and we have the lowest prices around.

Credibility

Some sites advertise that they are members of the Better Business Bureau (BBB), but that organization has no control over the quality (just the claims it makes) or nothing at all to do with the price. Many of these sites do not employ or have lawyers doing the work even though their company's name implies that they do. Furthermore, how many times in your life have you called the BBB to check someone out?

At Alpha American, we do not need to build our credibility on titles or deception. We will let our service speak for itself and save you money at the same time.

Electronic Filing Risk

There are two ways of filing a copyright, one is by computer and the other is by mail. When you file by computer your application arrives at the government office immediately, while your sample works arrives by mail, and they are processed separately. It has been reported that last year alone the government received 600,000 separate works to be filed. Just imagine, a small percentage of problems can lead to a great number of mishaps in this year's new computer filing system (which was first launched in the late summer of 2007).

Our proven process of preparing your application, sending it to you to sign personally and follow the instructions to copy and mail it to the U.S. Copyright Office avoids this problem. This way you mail everything together at one time, everything gets there at the same time, and you have copies and receipts for everything. This is the traditional way that it's been done for many years, minimizing the chance of things being misplaced under the new system.

Privacy

Many sites claim to have the best Internet security available, yet how many hands does it pass through before it gets sent off to the government? What security do you have when you are sending your works to a complete stranger who is not a lawyer or may imply to be one?

By sending it off to the government yourself, as we recommend at Alpha American, your work stays completely private and no one has to see it but you.

Trademark Searches

There are sites on the net that will do trademark searches to make sure that the trademark you want to register is original and not already in use or confused with an existing trademark in your marketplace. But what they don't tell you is that they only search one string of characters and if it does not pass their search criteria, you will be charged again for a second search. They will do this over and over again until they find your mark suitable for use.

We lookup a maximum of 3 character strings for one low price so that you do not get stuck with a large bill for this service. We also personally advise you in choosing a classification that best suits your goods/services (if more than one could apply to your good/service). In some instances, this would minimize your fees because additional classifications cost over $300 each.