Users are warning about a new extortion scheme targeting business owners. User QuietCelery wrote that they received an SMS from a certain "Robert" at the law firm Summit Law Associates. The scammer claimed that the victim's trademark registration application had been rejected and threatened that if they did not hire their firm to defend their rights, their client would sue them. The author immediately suspected a scam: a real lawyer representing a competitor's interests would never offer their services to the opposing side — that is a severe conflict of interest.

As it turned out, the law firm was completely fake. According to moderator teratical, the scammers simply copied the website of a real law firm, tresslerassociates.com (which has been around since 2009), changed the founder's last name from Tressler to Summit, and altered the address. The lawyers whose photos were featured on the site did not even have a license to practice law in New York.

In the comments, actual lawyers confirmed that this is a scam. According to user ptauger, who has been practicing patent law for over 30 years, lawyers never send pre-litigation demands via SMS — certified mail is used for that. He noted that impersonating a lawyer is a criminal offense in most states, and advised reporting such scammers to the Attorney General and the New York State Bar Association.

User Pompeii_D_Struction added that they encountered a similar scheme from a fake firm called Oxford Legal Firm. The scammers monitor public databases of the patent office (USPTO), find rejected trademark applications, and scare business owners with lawsuits, hoping to force them to pay for unnecessary legal services.