Hoax or not?

[paperclip]

We've received 2 emails from China based companies claiming that there's a company who want to register the same domain name as what we have registered(but with .cn, .asia, .hk, .in, .org.cn, .tw, .tv). Both emails mentioned about Intellectual Property Rights to that domain name and asking if we would like to dispute their registration. Anyone received such a mail before? I'm just curious to know whether this is a hoax or not ... whether to pay heed to them or not. Somehow I just feel like they can't be trusted but they've called so many times.

[canagdesigner]

It remember to myself..
when i meet someone in the chatting room
asking me to send him few bucks money..
for men's personal thing.. pictures and else..
and never I did.. I could get free download..
the situation of hoax really just playing around..

they really can't be trusted..

[mylinear]

Originally Posted by paperclip

We've received 2 emails from China based companies claiming that there's a company who want to register the same domain name as what we have registered(but with .cn, .asia, .hk, .in, .org.cn, .tw, .tv). Both emails mentioned about Intellectual Property Rights to that domain name and asking if we would like to dispute their registration. Anyone received such a mail before? I'm just curious to know whether this is a hoax or not ... whether to pay heed to them or not. Somehow I just feel like they can't be trusted but they've called so many times.

Haven't received such an email but it could be:

1. They are just spamming and checking if your email address is valid and so that they can compile and sell addresses to spammers.

2. If you reply and tel them you have no objections to their registrations, maybe after a while they will inform you that you are the one who has violated their IP rights since they have registered that domain with other extensions.

[paperclip]

Originally Posted by mylinear

Haven't received such an email but it could be:

1. They are just spamming and checking if your email address is valid and so that they can compile and sell addresses to spammers.

2. If you reply and tel them you have no objections to their registrations, maybe after a while they will inform you that you are the one who has violated their IP rights since they have registered that domain with other extensions.

They've called and faxed to us so many times already its quite hard to ignore them. The guy who spoke to me only speaks very little English and when I replied him in English he do not understand so I had to ask my colleague to translate his Mandarin conversation and fax.

[Seanie]

We got this recently, from westnet.hk.cn

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 July 8, 2008, we received an application formally. One company named "Gtya Tbobu Company" wanted to register following
Domain names:
ourdomain.cn
ourdomain.com.cn
ourdomain.net.cn
ourdomain.org.cn
ourdomain.tw
ourdomain.com.tw
ourdomain.hk
ourdomain.asia
Internet TradeMark:
ourdomain
through our body.

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 Gtya Tbobu Company yet, in order to deal with this issue better, Please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

Olar

They made up the name of the company - you can find other very similar emails from this company in articles about spam on the Internet, always with a different company name. Their goal is to sell you domain names similar to your own, but in different TLDs. Fairly harmless, but spam, nonetheless. Slightly less harmless than most spam, they claim to be obliged by their government to protect you:

So required by government to inform your company to protect your Intellectual property.

Just ignore them, we made the mistake of replying to them initially, but they soon give up if you don't reply.

[paperclip]

Hey the mail that was sent to us looks like exactly the same as the one u sent(!) jst that the company name of the interested party is different and sender is different. Thanks for the info guys.

[mylinear]

The message posted by Seanie above is spam. They are trying to get you to buy those other extensions for your domain from them hoping that you will want to protect your IP rights.

[LiteSpeed]

definately a hoax , saw this a while back on digg but cant seem to find a link.

nevertheless ignore them

[neutro]

Plenty. Sometime I said go ahead and register other extensions by all means and stop pestering me lol

[mysticmind]

example.

If maxis in malaysia, maxis.com.my .. they have a right for their .com.my (even you bought earlier) in malaysia because it's trademarked... but not Maxis.com (-by sims actually , since it's international)

If they're just Chinese company, they don't have right for the international one.. unless they're going international.. but, if you're the first owner.. they don't have any choice except to pay you sum of money lah.

[paperclip]

They have not bothered us ever since I told them we are not interested but they did say tht we've been blacklisted in their record ... and if there's ano other similar applications in the future, they will not inform us anymore :P