Another Source of Fraud: Urgent notice of Intellectual Property protection

Internet Scamming is rampant and here is yet another way these guys are trying to separate us from our hard earned money. A client of mine received an email stating that someone in the China/Asia are wants to file for a domain name that was already held by my customer. They wanted confirmation that my customer was the trademark owner. The message was as follows:

Subject: Urgent notice of Intellectual Property protection

Dear Manager:

This email is from China domain name registration center, which mainly deal with the domain name registration and dispute internationally in China and Asia.
On July 4th 2011, We received Tianhua Ltd's application that they are registering the name "[Customer’s Domain Name]" as their Internet Keyword and " [Customer’s Domain Name].cn "、" [Customer’s Domain Name].com.cn " 、" [Customer’s Domain Name].asia "domain names etc.., It is China and ASIA domain names. But after auditing we found the brand name been used by your company. As the domain name registrar in China, it is our duty to notice you, so I am sending you this Email to check. According to the principle in China, your company is the owner of the trademark, In our auditing time we can keep the domain names safe for you firstly, but our audit period is limited, if you object the third party application these domain names and need to protect the brand in china and Asia by yourself, please let the responsible officer contact us as soon as possible. Thank you!

Best regards,

John
Oversea marketing manager 
Shanghai Office (Head Office)
3002, Nanhai Building, No. 854 Nandan Road,
Xuhui District, Shanghai 200070, China
Tel: +86 216191 8696
Mobile: +86 136615 29704
Fax: +86 216191 8697
Web: www.ygnetworkltd.com

Here is a great article that goes through and picks out all of the pieces that may help you in the future to determine if email like the one above is real or a scam.