Domain name war?

D

Dmitry.M

Joined
Jun 13, 2006
Messages
1,008
Today i got an e-mail. it looks like chineese are trying to wink my domain name from me.

This is a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in HongKong, China.
On November.15, 2010, we received an application from MEIHUA Group requested"artandknife"
as their internet trademark keyword and China (CN) domain names. But after checking ,we find this name is conflict
with your company's name or trademark. In order to deal with this issue better, it's necessary to send this email
to you and confirm with your company whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China?
If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better.
Click to expand...

does anyone have experience with that& How to deal with it or what should i do?
 
First make sure the email is from you domain provider and not a scam. Then if so reply saying you did not authorize it. Beyond that might have to contact lawyer?
 
Email them back and say, "Yes it's mine, no I didn't authorize them to use it, no I'm not affiliated with them. Kindly tell them to go climb a rope." This may or may not help.
 
james terrio said:
Email them back and say, "Yes it's mine, no I didn't authorize them to use it, no I'm not affiliated with them. Kindly tell them to go climb a rope." This may or may not help.
Click to expand...

I did, but i am not sure they respect ANY law in China... At least they are free to register the same domain name in .cn zone and I can not do anything with that.
 
I'm afraid you're probably right. It's a tricky situation, who's to stop anyone from using an alternate spelling for that matter? "arrtandknife" or "artandknives" for instance. :(
 
This is a scam. Google is your friend. Just copy and paste the first sentence in to a google search and you'll have all the info you need. :)
 
This is a scam. Do not reply to further emails. Its best not to respond at all, since that tells them that is a valid email address and they can sell it to other scammers/spammers. Its a ploy by some chineese people to get you to "register" multiple worthless domain names with their "company" for some undisclosed amount of money. No one is actually trying to steal your domain name. Google "chineese domain name scam" or "chineese domain name fraud" to learn more. I've recieved a few of these myself and suspected as much, and then did some research and confrimed it to be a scam. They basically go through lists of domain registries, make up some other domain names similar to the ones they found (blabla.whatever,..... .etc) off the top of their heads that some imaginary "company" is trying to "register" and send out a ton of these emails to as many websites as they can, offering their "help" which is ultimately given for a "small fee".

Got to give them credit, they're creative.
 
I get it now. I remember hearing that politicians pay big dollars to snap up any domain name that might be confused with their real one; these folks are trying to cash in on that sort of thing, yes?
 
well, ignoring the scam it is always smart to snap up similar domains if you want to protect your brand identity. Whether that just means having .com, .net, .org... or variations of the name as well depends on your business and the name. If it is something easily misspelled or where someone hearing it rather than reading it might spell it differently then it is just good business to own those variations and have them all direct to your site.

The scammers are taking advantage of this concept, but there are also cyber squatters who will register variations on a popular domain and then use that space to sell advertising, get revenue from clicks, or just offer to sell it to you at quite the profit. Legally there are ways to fight it but they cost money and if the squatter is saying they'll transfer it for $1000 and your lawyer won't even be done filing before billing you for $1000 then you have to decide which way you want to go.

A number of people have gotten very rich on variations of this. Not so much squatting, but buying up a bunch of domains that people might try for a particular subject and then selling the ad space and links. That's what you're looking at if you type a domain wrong and get a bunch of text links that seem related to what you meant to find. It's not a huge profit per visit, even if you click one of the links, but with the right choices and a big collection of domains it can pay pretty well.
 
You will probably get an email from them saying the will represent your interest in china for a fee of blah,

Let us know.
 
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