Trademark Problems
Oh no, what can I possibly do?
I have just been informed that:
We are a professional internet consultant organization in Asia, we have a pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company. On Sep,8,2009, we received an application formally, one company named [company name] applied for the brand keyword “thepickards” and following domain names:
- thepickards.asia
- thepickards.cn
- thepickards.com.cn
- thepickards.com.hk
- thepickards.com.tw
- thepickards.hk
- thepickards.net.cn
- thepickards.tw
with our organization.
During our preliminary investigation, we found that these domain names’ keyword is identical with your trademark. I wonder whether you consigned [company name] to register these domain names with us? Or is [company name] your business partner or distributor in Asia?Unsolicited Email
Note that not only does the unsolicited email think that I am somehow going to be concerned by someone registering ‘thepickards’ domains in China (.cn), Taiwan (.tw) and Hong Kong (.hk), but they have gone to the trouble of addressing me (not by name of course) as the president and CEO of the company.
Well, that’s very nice of them, but this is really just another cut and paste job using my domain name and looking to see what other domain names in their registration area are available and then no doubt trying to get me into panicking to think that I simply must get them registered, where no doubt this company would offer me first dibs on the domain names for an appropriate remuneration.
It could be a complete scam: i.e. I could pay the money and get buggerall in return, or it could simply be a scare designed to drum up business. Either way, I see it as something at least a little underhand, and to be honest, I’m not actually desperate to ensure that any references to ‘thepickards’ is owned by me. And even if I was (and I’m not), I’d be more interested in stuff like thepickards.com, or thepickards.eu, or thepickards.net, rather than some obscure (to me) Chinese domains.
Of course, one of the minor clues that it’s not entirely a full-on legit query is the fact that it wasn’t addressed to me. It’s not exactly difficult to find out what my name is, if you have a poke around the website. There’s even a contact form people can use. If you don’t use either of these and your email to me looks (presumably with very good reason) like you’ve simply mailmerged my details into a standard letter that you’re spamming out to others, then I will tend to assume your email is spam.
And that’s before we start looking at minor details like the company name you provided appearing to be fictitious (they certainly don’t have a website and I can’t find any reference to them). For goodness sake, if you’re going to send me spam, at least do me the credit of realising that shit spam will be recognised as such easily.
…and dealt with accordingly.
But it’s all the rest of you that I wish to complain about. If spammers couldn’t make money out of doing this sort of thing; if people didn’t buy goods, services, or in this case domain names from unsolicited spam, then people wouldn’t do it. Those of you out there who do click on the links and buy the goods are encouraging the spammers to perpetuate the spam. You are therefore equally to blame. So stop it.
Message ends…
Gary Miller says:
September 20th, 2009 at 7:53 am
There’s one born every minute…
Anyway, I quite like the idea of ‘ThePickards’, (London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong & Gateshead)
mark says:
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:35 pm
you’d also think if they’d done any homework at all they’d try to disguise it a bit better – considering they are trying to fleece a computer programmer
test says:
September 19th, 2011 at 11:48 pm
test…
It’s a known truth that right knowledge can be very important when we are doing something new and even more it if is important to us….
Serpihan says:
September 5th, 2012 at 6:25 am
SEO Services from If you’ve taken us up on our offer of a free SEO analysis, you will have some itndcaiion of just how personal and bespoke we can make our SEO services to get you the results you desire. Organic, natural, tailor-made SEO services are the best way to get real, positive rankings on the world’s biggest search engines. It will help to increase your visibility, attract greater traffic and garner better conversions for your products.Bespoke search engine optimisation services that accentuate your brand and complement your wider marketing strategy are the best way to cultivate new visitors and get better online exposure. At SEO Consult, we will outline a strategy that will give you prominence for key terms on search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing, whilst being transparent enough to accommodate your voice SEO Consult is a leading Search Engine Optimisation agency in the UK and worldwide. Since 2003 SEO Consult has been practicing Search Engine Optimisation techniques for 100 s of businesses worldwide.SEO Consult is a trading sub domain of Click Consult, the SEO Consult website was created to create a website dedicated to the topic we love so much, Search Engine Optimisation.With more than 60 Search Engine Marketing professionals and offices in Cheshire and London, SEO Consult leads the way in the Search Engine Optimisation industry.SEO Consult pride ourselves on service and results, our company structure of Account managers & SEO Programmers ensure that every account SEO Consult manages is managed to ensure the balance of expectations and results are maintained through the project duration Search Engine Optimisation (Optimization if you’re Stateside) or SEO is a process by which internal and external aspects of a web site are adjusted to gain high search engine returns on key word and key phrase searches. Search returns are sometimes referred to as organic or natural.The majority of web traffic is driven by the major commercial search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN. Google attracts approximately 60% of worldwide searches at 37 billion, with Yahoo (8.5 billion) and Microsoft (2.2 billion). A number of country-specific search engine companies have also become prominent in their own territories; for example Baidu in China, Guruji in India, Yandex in Russia.High placements invariably lead to sites receiving an increase in traffic. 78% of users abandoning their search if the first 3 pages don’t provide an answer to their question high search engine placements are essential. 28% don’t even consider scrolling past the 2nd page of results. High traffic can be converted to revenue through sales, advertising revenue, referrals, votes or whatever call to action is invoked on landing pages. Smart, professional Search Engine Optimisation yielding high organic returns (70% of search engine users prefer organic search returns to sponsored links or PPC) can deliver extremely powerful results.Anyone promising guaranteed top results , submission to thousands of search engines and directories , instant results , permanent top positions or such like, most likely doesn’t know what they’re doing and are worth avoiding