Posted on by Erik J. Heels

* Chinese Domain Name Scam: Shanghai IDC, Gardiner Limited

Legitimate or not?

Within the last two weeks, two of Clock Tower Law Group’s clients have received email solicitations from a company in China. The company appears to be offering registered trademark owners (i.e. our clients) the chance to register certain Chinese domain names that a third party (Gardiner Limited) is supposedly trying to register.

Each of my clients thought that the email sounded suspicious and asked for my help. Is this a legitimate and clever marketing campaign? Or is it something else? I do not know the answer. I hope that by posting the emails (edited to remove the names of my clients and replacing their domains with “example”) in this article that others will find this article and provide their input in the comments.

This email arrived first:

Subject:  URGENT-Dispute of trademark / China
From:  Jet Yao 
To:  [DELETED]

Dear CEO,

We are registration service authorized by
CHINAGOV (THE DEVELOPMENT CENTER OF THE STATE
COMMISSION OFFICE FOR PUBLIC SECTOR REFORM in
China. We have something need to confirm with you. We
formally received an application. One company which called
'Gardiner Limited' is applying to register followings:

Internet brand: example

Domain Names: www.example.tw, www.example.hk,
www.example.net.cn, www.example.org.cn

After our initial examination, we found that the internet
brand being applied for is as same as your company's
name. These days we are dealing with it, hope to get the
affirmation from your company. If your company has not
authorized the aforesaid company to register these, Please
contact us as soon as possible.

In addition, we hereby affirm that our time limit for
dissent application is 15 days.  If your company files no
dissent within the time limit, we will unconditionally
approve the application submitted by "Gardiner Limited".

Best Regards,

Jet Yao
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shanghai IDC Network Information & Technology Co., Ltd
ADD:A601, Block 2, ShanghaiWithub White-cat Science Park
No.641 TianshanRoad ,Shanghai
Tel:+(86)21 5175 0322
Fax:+(86)21 5175 0301
website: www.govidc.org.cn

This email arrived second:

From: steven [mailto:steven@govidc.com.cn]
To: [DELETED]
Subject: URGENT - dispute of network domain name and trademark

Dear CEO,

We are registration service authorized by
CHINAGOV (THE DEVELOPMENT CENTER OF THE STATE
COMMISSION OFFICE FOR PUBLIC SECTOR REFORM) in
China. we have something need to confirm with you. We
formally received an application. One company which called
'Gardiner Limited' are applying to register "example" as
internet brand and CN domain names
"www.example.hk, www.example.com.hk, www.example.tw,
www.example.com.tw, www.example.net.cn, www.example.org.cn"
on Aug. 15, 2007.

After our initial examination, we found that the internet
brand applied for registration are as same as your company's
name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it, hope
to get the affirmation from your company. If your company
has not authorized the aforesaid company to register these,
Please contact us as soon as possible.

In addition, we hereby affirm that our time limit for
dissent application is 15 days.  If your company files no
dissent within the time limit, we will unconditionally
approve the application submitted by "Gardiner Limited".

Best Regards,

Steven Zhang

Sponsoring Registrar: Shanghai IDC Co.,Ltd
Address:Building 2, White-cat Science Park No.641, Tianshan
Road,Chang ning Section, Shanghai, China

Tel: +86-21-5175 0338
      +86-21-5175 0321
Fax: +86-21-5175 0301
Website: http://www.govidc.org.cn
E-mail:  steven@govidc.com.cn

I do know that there are top-level domain names for nearly 200 countries/jurisdictions, and that each country/jurisdiction has its own rules for who can register a domain name. Many registers (such as GoDaddy) can register country TLDs (top-level domains). Here is a list of domain name registries around the world with links to the registration authority for each TLD. If you want to register a foreign domain name, first check with your US domain name registrar, then check with this TLD list.


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26 Replies to “* Chinese Domain Name Scam: Shanghai IDC, Gardiner Limited”

  1. Eric,

    I am an it manager for an architecture firm in the US and we have received several of these. I doubt if too many people fall for this but I suspect there are a few. I appreciate your researching “Colin’s” information as his post, while very generic and not very convincing, might have given some pause.

    Please take your friends and leave, “Colin”.

    Thanks,

    Chris

    Reply
  4. Pingback: NetInChina domain name registrar spam
  5. Pingback: Crunchy Links - December 10th 2007

  6. My last message had the email address removed. I wanted to make sure that it is posted, so that people receiving email from the same person can find this thread by googling it up.

    It is: Denny.Rowe@netinchina.com.hk
    that is, denny dot rowe at netinchina.com.hk

    In the meantime, I found this message on the Internet, which is dated september 2007, reporting pretty much the same thing:

    http://www.startupnation.com/forums/7648/1/1

    and I performed a whois lookup on the domain names that the message listed as being in the process of being registered (dianalindesign.cn, etc.). It looks like nobody has actually registered them so far.

    Alberto.

    Reply

  7. I received two of these today as well, from . I am not even going to reply.

    However, I would like to know if any of you who received such messages before, can now confirm whether the domain names in .cn, .tw, .kr, .hk, etc. have actually been registered by those guys – or if it’s just an attempt to get people to pay them for registering new domains.

    Best,
    Alberto.

    Reply

  8. Yeah, total scam. We received initial letters similar to those listed here. We were ‘nicer’ and subsequent replies were nicer to match. It was disturbing to read some of the other replies from them. Note that spacing and punctuation were left in tact. Ours went like this:
    ————————–
    Dear >Some CEOSome CEO<,

    Yes,you should register and protect those Domain names before “banakes corp CO”and before you success in the registration.you should do as the processe here belowe:

    1.Your company shows the proof to prove you are the holder of this brand or trademark(such as: the copy to trademark certificate, the copy of certificate of incorporation,)
    2. You fill in the application form and return it via email(scaned) or fax.
    3.We send the billhead to you.
    4. You transfer the payment to us according to the Bank information on the billhead and fax the payment proof to us.
    5. We register the domain names for you within 2 workdays after getting the payment.

    Please tell me whether you want register and protect those Domain names.
    ————————
    As someone already pointed out, there is no watchdog organization that holds up domain registration and ‘gives you a chance’ to register yourself. If its avialable, its available. This is just a simple but annoying scam

    Reply

  10. We received a similar email. In fact, someone replied to my inquiry! The first email had attachments that did not contain viruses – a business registration certificate and certificicate of incorporation. Here is the reply to my inquiry:

    Hallo
    I am kevin.tian . We had discussed the case about your company’s domain names. We did not receive your reply until now. If so, we will think you have given up these domain names. So we will help the third company register these domain names after 5 workdays. StarMax company will become the legal owner of these domain names in the world. We had notified you, so we are not responsible for any dispute questions about intellectual property right and trade mark after they succeed in registration. If you would like to register by yourselves, pls contact us within 5 workdays.

    Best Regards,

    Kevin.Tian
    ——————————————————————————–
    kevin.tian
    2007-11-30

    ——————————————————————————–
    发件人： LSchaldonat-Corporate
    发送时间： 2007-11-27 23:38:59
    收件人： kevin.tian@cnirc.hk
    抄送：
    主题： FW: Kenclark Domain Names

    Did your company send this or is this spoofed email? Thank you.

    Reply

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