Scam? Or is someone planning revenge against me?

They applied for similar domains and registration of my "brand keyword"

[Nick_Hope]

I own and publish to the domain, let's say, "examplesite.com". I have owned this for a number of years.

I just received notice by email from a "professional internet consultant organization" that a company has applied for 9 similar domain names: examplesite.biz, examplesite.cn, examplesite.com.hk etc..

They also say that the company has "applied for the brand keyword "examplesite"".

"Example Site" is our trademark, but registered only in Thailand. We have not registered "examplesite" (single word) as a trademark.

I do not know what this "application for a brand keyword" means. I have been searching the web for information and have come across ikeyword, navicode etc., but it is not clear whether this register is still open for applications or even relevant/important today. It seems like an old scheme that didn't really take off. But I might be wrong.

My brand is certainly not the main way customers find me, but a small percentage (less than 5%) do find my site by entering "Example Site" or "examplesite" in a search engine, and this percentage may well grow in the future, so it might be worth registering somehow if I can.

I don't think I want to go as far as registering all those 9 domains myself as a defensive measure. I'm pretty confident I can beat them in SERPS unless they have some serious clout behind them (or unless this "registered brand" carries weight with Google etc.).

Alternatively, if this is a genuine application and they are a big company, I might actually receive extra traffic from users arriving at my .com domain instead of one of theirs.

I have recently found a lot of my photographs and video infringed on other sites and have had to issue a lot of DMCA-notices to get them removed. No doubt some of the infringers are a little upset about this. I am therefore wondering if this application is part of some revenge exercise. In the worst case I fear they might duplicate my whole site on those 9 domains in an effort to dilute my traffic, taking a gamble that I won't take legal action.

Or maybe they're trying to scam me into buying 9 more domain names?

Questions:

1. Can anyone shed light on "applying for a brand keyword? Is this important? Should I be applying for this myself? How to apply?

2. Should I be worried?

3. How can I defend myself from this threat?

Thanks!

[htdawg]

i've gotten a couple of those emails too, most of the time its just a scam to get you to buy the domains from them. as for the extentions .net, biz ect.. if its important to you then get them before someone else does.

[bill]

This is a scam!
Ignore these mails. We get posts about this all the time. These will normally come from Chinese domain registrars looking to get you to sign up for domains you don't need at inflated prices. If you really want ccTLDs then register them through your own preferred registrar, not these shysters.

[MrHard]

Scam, I ignored. No registration was ever made.

[JohnRoy]

This folks are still in business it seems... Not everyone with a brand name checks WebmasterWorld prior to registering 9 useless domains in china...