The old Chinese domain name scam seems to have morphed recently with a new intellectual property rights angle:

Dear Manager
We are a professional intellectual property rights consultant organization, mainly deal with the global domain name registration and internet intellectual property rights protection.
On May. 21st, 2010, we formally received an application from KangShen Technology Limited, they applied to register the internet brand ( ourcompanyname ) and some in China and Asia’s domain name.

During our preliminary investigation, we found that these domain names’ keyword is fully identical with your trademark. Therefore, we need to confirm with you, whether you consigned KangShen Technology Limited to register these domain names with us or not? Or, is KangShen Technology Limited your business partner or distributor?

If you have no relationship with this company, we assume that they have other purposes to obtain these domain names.

Currently, we have already suspended this company’s application temporarily due to the seriousness of this isuue. In order to avoid the vicious domain name grabbing, please let the relevant person make a confirmation with me via email as soon as possible. Thank you for your support to our work!

Best Regards!
Anne Ling

Registration Department Manager
Hong Kong NewName Net Service Limited
Tel:+852-3069 6940
Fax:+852-3071 7730

Email:anne@trademarkdns.com
Internet:www.trademarkdns.com

I’ve actually received a few of these recently, so they seem to be on the go a bit more lately. I’s be curious to learn stats about how effective something like this is. Always search for something like this before you pursue any further.