I’ve seen a recent rash in clients reporting receipt of an email that look like this:

Dear CEO,

We are the domain name registration organization in Asia, which mainly deal with international company’s in Asia. We have something important need to confirm with your company.

On the Sept 17th 2008, we received an application formally. One company named “XXXXXX” wanted to register following Internet Trademark: [CLIENT'S TRADEMARK]

Domain names:
[CLIENT'S TRADEMARK].asia
[CLIENT'S TRADEMARK].hk
[CLIENT'S TRADEMARK].net.cn
[CLIENT'S TRADEMARK].org.cn
[CLIENT'S TRADEMARK].tw
through our body.

During our auditing procedure we find out that the alleged “XXXXXXXXX” has no trade mark, Intellectual property, nor patent even similar to that word. we found that the keywords and domain names applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark. one point need you to confirm: whether this alleged “XXXXXXXXX” is your business partner or distributor in ASIA. if so, we will complete their registration. These days we are dealing with it.

If you are not in charge of this please transfer this email to appropriate dept. in order to deal with this issue better, please let someone who is responsible for trademark or domain name contact me as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

Here are a few examples of people on the Internet discussing it, calling it a scam:

• http://blog.mindvalleylabs.com/the-chinese-domain-name-scam/333/
• http://successfulsoftware.net/2008/04/19/chinese-domain-scam/
• http://www.roncastle.com/2008/06/chinese-domain-name-scam.html
• http://blog.sinohosting.net/beware-of-chinese-domain-names-fraud/

FYI, in case one of your clients receives one…

Update: Another citation – http://domainnamewire.com/2008/12/17/recognizing-the-trademark-domain-name-scam/. [2008.12.17 @ 12:29 PM, hat tip @mattsaunders]

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