During August 2008 we posted information on ourwebsite warning our clients and trade mark owners about Chinesescam emails.Due to the risk that these scams pose we feel it is necessary tore-post and update the news article below.
A few of our clients have received emails from Chinese domain name vendors stating that a third party intends to register their trade mark as a domain name under various Top Level Domain (TLD) extensions. We insert below a sample of the email received, we have replaced the trade mark with XXX.
Dear CEO,
We are a domain name registration service company in asia, which mainly deal with international company's in Asia. We have something important need to confirm with your company.
On the May 22, 2008, we received an application formally. One company named "Tambora International Holdings Ltd" wanted to register following Domain names:
XXX.asia
XXX.cc
XXX.cn
XXX.com.hk
After our initial examination, we found that the keywords and domain names applied for registration are as same as your company's name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it. If you do not know this company, we doubt that they have other aims to buy these domain names. Now we have not finished the registration of Tambora company yet, in order to deal with this issue better, Please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.
Best Regards,
Sherry
Auditing Department
This form of email communication is a scam and is intended to frighten trade mark owners into registering domain names with the company that originated the email at an inflated price. The domain names mentioned in these scams are usually registered on a “first come, first served” basis so there is no reason to report such a risk to a trade mark owner.
If the trade mark owner responds the scammer usually registers the domain names, under its own name, as the response indicates that the domain names are of value and have the potential to generate income for the scammer. The trade mark owner is then in a predicament, "Do they buy a domain name back or institute legal action for a domain name they never wanted?"
If you receive such an email it is advisable to ignore it. If the email includes a domain name that you may want to secure rather register it through your own provider or at www.lexsynergy.com.