Indeed it is illegal and you'll definitely get into trouble with some law enforcement agency if you impersonate the government. But there's not a US Trademark Renewal Services Department to impersonate. You can name your company anything that's not already someone else's property or the name of a governmental body.
Are these companies despicable? Yes. Are they misleading people? I'd say so. Can you make a fraud charge stick? Probably not. In cases I've seen, if you read the entire document, including fine print, and you think logically about the content, you can deduce that the companies sending these notices/invoices/wtfe are just hoping the target isn't savvy enough to figure things out.
> Which just means the persistent can just find a state to incorporate in that is just a little bit more lax than the others
At that point, set up in Latvia. Generally speaking, companies incorporated outside Delaware or the state they’re physically in get extra scrutiny. Also, if your only check before issuing payment is looking at the entity’s name, that’s more the problem than anything else.
are suggesting the US should adopt sane, simple, effective legislation?! I'm shocked at your attack on freedom!
they will probably solve this by curating a list of "good words to register your company" which then can be claimed as a tax exemption that requires two new forms. which adds $25 to services bill at H&Rblock. like God intended.
Bad news. In the US, businesses’ God given right to impersonate the government is already being infringed. I ran across this when reading the rules to register a business a few years back. Maybe it was just a state law, but if that’s on the books in Texas, it’s probably prohibited in all states.
> Can you make a fraud charge stick? Probably not.
I wouldn't rely on weasel-wording to keep you out of jail. Even if those people aren't technically lying, it's obvious that they attempt to mislead people into paying for services they have never ordered.
In some of those cases, they're trying to convince someone into ordering a service and paying for it at the same moment. My domains have public registration, so I get a lot of these BS solicitations. (It pleases me every time I get one, because these scammers^DELentrepreneurs are losing money on each of my domains...
"If your domain lapses and no one can get to your site, you could lose business or even lose the domain entirely. Renew your domain today for only $99.95!"
"If you don't submit your business to Google and drop off of search results, your business could suffer. Send us $100 and we'll handle submitting your site to Google for you."
Those statements are not technically wrong; these companies are soliciting to provide a service; obviously techies find the practice abhorrent and misleading, but they live in a muddy grey area where they provide some service and charge money for it.
