[Jian Xu] Ignore spam emails "your brand has been registered!" but review your IP portfolio in China

How many times have you received unsolicited yet "urgent" emails like this one?

Dear President,

This email is from XXX Intellectual Property Office, which mainly deal with the IPR registration and dispute internationally. We recently received an application from XXX. They want to register your company's trademark in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and some Domain name (.asia/.cn/.com.cn/.hk/.com.hk/.tw/.com.tw).

After our examination, we found that your company were using the keyword, so we inform you to confirm whether this registration will affect your company. If this registration will not affect and conflict your company, then we can finish registering for the applicant as per our duty. If this registration will affect and conflict your company. Please contact us by telephone or email within 10 workdays, so we can better handle the dispute.

Best Regards

A lot of companies often receive such emails, and we usually inform them that these are spam emails. This is a very common tactic of unethical agents either to promote their services or to fraud potential applicants.

However, such spam emails, although annoying, might not be worthless. They might serve to reminder companies receiving such emails to re-visit their IP situation/strategy in China. Even if the company has no commercial presence in China but does have Chinese business partners such as suppliers or distributors, it is still important for the client to register their trade mark as well as other key IP in China. It is always much easier, not to mention cheaper, to register IP rights than to fight off squatted ones.