China Domain Name and Trademark Warning Emails: Scam or Real?
An email arrives from a supposed Chinese registrar, law firm, or trademark agency. Someone, it says, is trying to register your company name, brand, or domain name in China. The deadline is imminent. Unless you respond immediately, you risk losing your rights.
Do not reply. Do not click the links, open the attachments, or send money. But do not automatically delete the message either. Most China domain-name warning emails are mass solicitations designed to frighten companies into buying domains they do not need. China trademark emails are harder to dismiss. Many are scams or opportunistic sales pitches, but some identify real applications with real opposition deadlines. Preserve the email and verify its claims independently.
The China Domain-Name Scam
We have been seeing versions of the same China domain-name email for nearly two decades. It usually reads something like this:
We are China’s internet domain services company. We recently received an application from a Chinese company seeking to register “[YOUR COMPANY NAME]” as its internet name and under several Chinese domain names. Because this name conflicts with your company name or trademark, we must confirm whether you authorized the registration. Please respond immediately.
Another version says someone is about to register your name under .cn, .com.cn, .net.cn, .asia, and several other extensions. The sender offers to block the supposed applicant by registering the entire package for you, provided you act at once.
The premise is usually nonsense. Domain registrars do not ordinarily put an unrelated customer’s proposed registration on hold while they contact a foreign company with a similar name. The sender is a salesman holding a manufactured emergency, not a referee holding a registration in escrow. Do not respond, not even to ask whether the message is legitimate. A response confirms that your email address works and that the name matters to you. It also gives the sender an opportunity to collect information, increase the pressure, or demand payment.
If the email claims a domain has already been registered, check that claim independently through the relevant registry, an established registrar, or a reputable domain-registration lookup service. Do not use the sender’s link. If the domain remains available and matters to your business, register it through a registrar you know and trust.
That does not mean buying every variation listed in the email. Defensive registrations make sense when customers are likely to use the domain, when a counterfeit site would look credible, or when the domain matters to your operations. Registering dozens of obscure extensions because a stranger manufactured a deadline wastes money and invites more solicitations.
If someone has actually registered and is using a confusingly similar domain, you are dealing with cybersquatting or trademark infringement. The appropriate response depends on how the domain is being used and what trademark rights you hold. Your options can include a demand letter, litigation, or a proceeding under the applicable domain-name dispute policy. See How to Stop China-Based Domain Name Theft and ICANN’s explanation of its Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.
China Trademark Emails Require More Care
A China trademark solicitation often looks more convincing:
According to our research, the following mark has been published in the Chinese Trademark Gazette. The mark is identical or similar to a trademark owned by your company. The opposition deadline is approaching. Please let us know if we can assist you.
The message may include an application number, filing date, applicant’s name, image of the mark, list of goods, and opposition deadline. None of this proves the sender is legitimate. Chinese trademark records are public, and anyone can copy information from them into a solicitation. The underlying application, however, may be real. An email claiming that someone intends to register twenty versions of your domain name is selling you domains. An email identifying a specific published trademark application can describe an actual filing.
The opposition window is short and about to get shorter. Under the Trademark Law currently in force, a prior-rights holder or interested party has three months from publication to oppose an application on specified relative grounds. Anyone can oppose on specified absolute grounds. Article 36 of the 2026 revised Trademark Law preserves that standing distinction but reduces the opposition period to two months beginning January 1, 2027.
Do not hire the sender merely because it found the application. Send the email to your own trademark lawyer and have the details checked through official or otherwise reliable sources. The applicant’s identity often matters as much as the mark itself. An application filed by your Chinese manufacturer, distributor, former employee, or former business partner deserves closer scrutiny than one filed by an unrelated company in a remote industry.
The covered goods and services matter too. An identical mark filed for products far removed from yours may have little practical effect. A similar mark covering the brand printed on goods leaving your Chinese factory can threaten your manufacturing and exports.
Even when the filing is real, an opposition is not automatically worthwhile. Ask what the registration can actually block and compare the cost of opposing it with the cost of letting it issue. Our fees for a China trademark opposition almost always come in at $5,000 or less through the initial CNIPA decision. Under both the current law and Article 38 of the revised law, CNIPA must ordinarily decide the opposition within 12 months after the opposition period closes. In special circumstances, the responsible CNIPA official can approve a six-month extension. An appeal or related cancellation proceeding adds time and expense.
Scammers Now Impersonate IP Offices
Some emails impersonate intellectual property offices or international organizations. They use official-looking seals, invoices, application numbers, and payment instructions. Others advertise private monitoring, publication, registration, or renewal services while making the charge look like a required government fee.
In April 2026, the World Intellectual Property Organization warned that scammers were impersonating WIPO and other major intellectual property offices. The scammers used the address [email protected] and demanded payment for supposed trademark and patent services. One version demanded €2,445 by wire to a Ukrainian bank account and threatened the loss of supposedly official IP protection. The application details looked real because the scammers had copied them from public records.
Accurate information does not make an invoice legitimate. A scammer can copy your trademark, application number, renewal date, and ownership information from a public database. Check the sender, deadline, requested service, and payment destination separately. Never verify a questionable message by using the contact information contained in that message.
What to Do When One of These Emails Arrives
Preserve the complete email, including the sender’s address, attachments, and headers if available. Send it to the person responsible for your company’s trademarks, domains, or legal affairs. Do not circulate suspicious attachments unnecessarily.
Identify exactly what the sender claims has happened. A proposed domain registration is not the same as a completed registration. A pending trademark application is not the same as a preliminarily approved mark open to opposition. A registered trademark requires a different analysis.
Verify the claim through your own lawyer, registrar, or an official database. For a trademark application, confirm the application number, applicant, mark, covered goods and services, status, publication date, and deadline. For a domain, determine whether it has been registered and how it is being used.
Only then should you decide whether action is warranted. The right response can be to ignore the matter, register an important domain, file your own China trademark application, oppose a pending application, challenge an existing registration, send a demand letter, or commence a domain-name proceeding. Use lawyers and service providers you select independently.
Who Needs China Trademark Protection, and What Should They File?
Not every company needs Chinese domains or trademarks. A neighborhood plumbing company that works only in Ohio probably has no reason to care whether someone registers a similar name in China. See Is Registering Your Trademark in China Always Necessary?.
The calculation changes as soon as your brand appears on a product or package inside China. A company that has never sold a single unit there can still face production or export problems if someone else registers the name printed on its goods.
A U.S., Canadian, British, Australian, or European trademark registration does not, by itself, create trademark rights in China. China is a first-to-file country, subject to exceptions that can be costly and difficult to establish. Waiting for a stranger’s warning email is a poor protection strategy.
A sound China trademark strategy begins with the business, not an application form. Start with the name on the product that generates your revenue. Then determine whether the company name, logo, Chinese-language name, or marks used on packaging also require protection and where the relevant Chinese subclasses create gaps.
One client came to us after an online filing service sold it eleven China trademark applications. After reviewing what the company made, how it packaged its products, and where its brand appeared, we concluded that one application would have covered its immediate defensive need. The client had not bought broader protection. It had bought ten unnecessary filings.
More applications do not necessarily provide better protection. The number of certificates matters less than whether the registrations cover the brands and products that generate revenue. See China Trademark Registration: Why U.S. Companies Need More Than a Filing Agent and Manufacturing in China? Register Your Trademark Before Someone Else Does.
Treat the email as a lead, not an instruction. If the stranger is right that your brand is exposed in China, fix the problem through someone you chose, not the person who found the hole and offered to sell you the patch.
