I often get calls from clients I am registering trade-marks for asking me if an invoice they have received is legitimate. These are so common that CIPO (Canadian Intellectual Property Office) prints a warning on their trade-mark approval notices that says:

The sender of the “invoice” cuts out the advertisement of the recipient’s trade-mark from the trade-marks journal, and sends it along with an invoice that looks like this:

That is one we received here at Harrison Pensa when a mark we are registering for ourselves was advertised.

So if you get one of these – don’t pay it. If in doubt, contact your trade-mark agent/lawyer.