Ok whats going on? Everything is now trademark? How come funnyanimalsvideo is trademark? What part of the word can they use for trademark? Funny? Animals? Video? Please i need advice how to respond on this email:
Dear Manager? LOL The email doesnt look very professional it reminds me of those dodgy African phishing emails. It is in fact a common scam which pops up once in a while they work by getting WHOIS domain lists and when you reply they ask for an extortionate fee to 'protect' your domain names. Its a scam dont reply. Just out of interest you will find if you check where the email has come you will find just a “HTTP 404 – Not Found†error. A website/domain name registrar with no website lol.
I recieve tons of these scam emails from China everyday claiming rights to domain names. Ignore them.
The way I read it, scam or not, is that they say you have first dib's of the name - even though somebody else has applied. Then of course they want to sell you the domain names. My understanding of trademark and tradename law is that if you are a prior user of a name in any market then even if somebody else manages to get the name trademarked - they can't touch you for using it. In the UK, one way to do that is to post yourself a letter - and keep the dated postmark as evidence. Or even better, write to a friendly customer and get then to write back - with the tradename and date on the letter. Of course that doesn't help if you come up against an Amazon or Microsoft - but then nothing except $ does?