Domain Name Fraud Alert

Just this morning we received another inquiry from one of our customers concerning possibly fraudulent activities by purportedly reputable Asian Domain Name Registrars. So again we would remind everyone of this scam which has been going on for over a year.

Purportedly reputable domain name registrars from Honk Kong and other Far East countries have been using a scheme for about the last 18 months to drum up domain name registrations among U.S. Trademark holders.

Here's how it works. U.S. Trademark registrants receive an email from a domain name registrar reporting that they, the domain name registrar, has received an order to register domain names with various TLDs corresponding to the registrant’s registered U.S. Trademarks.

The registrar then reports to the registrant that in searching the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office’s records they “discovered” that the domain names to be registered are identical or highly similar to the trademark holder’s marks.

The registrar then offers the trademark holder the option to register the domain names before the other party does. Unsuspecting trademark holders take the registrar up and register multiple domain names under this veiled threat often for U.S. $50 to U.S. $100 per domain name per year.

In reality this is, at best, a hard marketing sale. At worst, it is a complete scam.

The genius of the plan is that if due diligence is conducted the alleged company referenced in the domain name registrar’s email as the entity which is about to register the domain names actually exists. So the trademark holder believes that their may be an actual threat to their marks.

We, in conjunction with some of our friends in Washington, D.C. mega-law firms, coordinated to spot this fraud and now are trying to get the word out. Having now witnessed this scam hundreds of times all should be advised that this routine is just a hard sell and U.S. Trademark holders should be aware of this fact before rushing to register such domain names under such an artificial threat.

The Trademark Company