China Domain Name Scams. Just Move Along....
If your company has done anything in China (even just sending someone there to meet with a supplier), you have probably received a somewhat official email offering, at a steep price, to "help" you stop someone from taking your domain name.
DO NOT RESPOND.
Near as I can tell, every single one of these that I have seen (and I have seen at least fifty of them because clients are always sending them to me) are a scam.
You also may get emails from someone claiming to have already registered some iteration of your company name (or one of your product names) and seeking to sell it to you. For example, if your company is called "xyz" and you already own the xyz.com domain name, your email may come from someone who has purchased and now wants to sell you the xyz.cn domain.
STRATFOR just did a "China Security Memo" on how it expects these emails to increase once ICANN starts accepting applications for domain names with non-Latin characters (i.e., Chinese):
This practice could get a further boost in China following the announcement in late October by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that domain names do not have to have Latin characters. No doubt Chinese domain peddlers are already preparing to register the established brand names of Chinese and foreign companies in Chinese characters (according to media reports, ICANN will start accepting applications for non-Latin domain names Nov. 16).
In other words, you should expect to receive emails from people offering to protect you from "others" who are seeking to register a Chinese translation or variant of your name or product or someone seeking to sell you an already registered translation or variant.
What to do?
First off, as soon as possible, register whatever domains necessary to protect yourself. Determine now what domain names you care about so you do not need to make this determination with a gun to your head. Right now is the time to think about Chinese character domain names.
Secondly, if someone has taken a domain name that is important to you and they are now offering to sell it to you, you essentially have three choices. One, let the domain name go. Two, buy it from the company that "took" it from you. And, three, pursue legal action against the company that took it from you.
Preemption by registration is your best and least expensive protection.
Comments (8)
Read through and enter the discussion by using the form at the endAllroads - November 13, 2009 8:45 AM
Dan.
Funny you should mention this. I got contacted just this week on this very thing..
The company said that a Chinese company wanted to register about 15 different variations of my URL
.com.cn
.net.cn
.asia.net.cn
... and so on.
I told them to go ahead and let the other company spend the 100 USD to register the URLs, but that if I began seeing my content on their pages I would be in touch.
Didn't hear anything back.
.. but my question is. What is their end game? That I would use them to register the URLs to "defend" myself? Or is there some other related scam associated with these types of offers?
ceh - November 13, 2009 12:37 PM
yes...they charge outrageous prices to register the domains. It's basically minor league extortion, and your best bet is to ignore them. These companies typically are affiliated with a fly-by-night registrar and operate out of Hong Kong or Southern China. If you show a lot of interest in any domain, they may very well register it and force your hand. On the other hand, if they get silence, they won't bother to waste their time and money.
Mark - November 13, 2009 1:46 PM
We had a similar experience - we had registered the important ones, .com.cn, .net.cn etc. anyway but then our content started showing up on OURCO.THIERCO.com.cn - essentially a server in their domain. As we delivered our b2b content only online it was a pain but we couldn't do much about it. What rankled more that was their translations were better than ours!
Alex - November 14, 2009 12:27 AM
Surely trademark is important here. If a trademark is registered the domain name (purporting to be in the same line of business/ripping content) should be surrendered (though ICANN intermediation can sometimes be slow).
I find the reverse interesting. Chinese companies have not much idea about the non-China Internet, and while sometimes international in business scope stick to a bizarre series of consonants with a .com.cn slapped on the end, while a foreign company register their company name/common usage name (non trademarked in West) with a .com.
While the TLDs are opening to international character sets, it has been possible to register a name like for ages, and ZH TLDs have been implemented by CNNIC via Punycode for a while
Jocelyn - November 15, 2009 7:55 PM
Thanks so much for this very timely post! It was a good reminder to get in gear and snap up my own Chinese character versions of domains I already have.
Hover Coupon - June 5, 2010 3:38 PM
For most people, it's cheaper to get a trademark and copyright for their domain from LegalZoom.com then it is to register and pay renewal fees on all possible copycat domain names. If you own, say, tigers.com and somebody registers tigers.net and tries to take and use your copyrighted content, you can sue them for damages. Big companies like Microsoft can afford to gobble up and maintain thousands of domain names but the average joe can't.
China IPR SME Helpdesk - October 14, 2010 11:32 PM
A number of Chinese Domain Name providers are trying, in bad faith, to encourage European companies to register a number of Asian domain name extensions. These providers typically claim that they have received a registration request from another company who wishes to register domain names that are identical to your company name.
When you receive such an email you have four options:
1)ignore the email
2) reply to the email that you will report this email to CNNIC (the Chinese domain name registry) as ‘slamming’ and an attempt at fraudulent activity
3)forward the email to CNNIC at service@cnnic.cn
4)Register some of those domain names you may have already considered registering, through your local or usual registrar.
Justin - April 30, 2011 2:21 AM
I have just received a mail like this and out of frantic, I responded by filling up their application form. However, before I proceeded to make payment I realize something was wrong and decided not to proceed further. Now, these people are claiming that I breach a contract. Their fees are few times more than I can get from other registrars and on top of that, they have certain thing called network brand which I have never heard of. What should I do ?