So there are ton of middlemen in the interent industry & business community who try to charge you a fee / tax for your ignorance, or service fee that is IMHO hard to justify.

I remember a long time ago I got a spam mail bill looking thing for $375 from www.trademarksafeguard.com

I guess this company sends mail to people who pay for a trademark, which costs around the same amount...$375, but they charge that fee to monitor your trademark.

Does it really matter if people register similar trademarks? Probably not, especially if they operate in different trades or industry. If someone registers a similar trademark in your industry and they are activley marketing that company then odds are pretty strong that you are going to notice it without needing someone else to tell you about it.

The message I got also said that in addition to tracking similar trademark registrations it also looks for the .com .net .biz .org and .info domain name registrations, but I think that generally is irrelevant. I mean you can buy all of them for what $50 a year, and again, even if someone registers a similar URL that is probably not going to be illegal and expensive to prove guilt on anyhow.

I don't see how they try to justify charging $375 a year for this service.