Quick fact: Chinese products sold internationally are designed to use brands that are discoverable using search engines, without the need for domain names.
Whether you use Google, Amazon, or Alibaba, Chinese brands don’t follow the Western “generic” keyword approach.
For a while now, China’s government is going the extra mile of subsidizing the cost of US trademark applications at the USPTO. During the past 3-4 years, the number of trademark applications originating in China has skyrocketed, extending the time it takes to process such applications to a year, or more.
What do Chinese product brands look like?
Below are two examples “in the wild” for products one can order on Amazon.
The first one is an NVMe SSD cooler to use in laptops. Its name is SGTKJSJS. Googling this takes you to the Amazon store of the Chinese brand, with zero effort and no need for a domain name.
The Chinese company applied for and received the registration for the SGTKJSJS mark in 2019.
While SGTKJSJS.com was registered at some point, the domain was a more or less automatic registration by a trademark squatter – a low level domain investor preying on trademark applications such as this one. They dropped the domain the following year after parking it at Undeveloped (Dan.com).
The second sample of a Chinese brand in the wild is even more fascinating. It looks like a series of stuck keys, as if your cat walked across your keyboard while you were busy loading up your coffee mug.
Once again, the product brand, LTYIVABHTTW, can be Googled and takes visitors to their Amazon store as the top result. As a seller of parts for headsets and other electronics, the company registered the LTYIVABHTTW trademark in 2019, in a matter of a few months – a feat that does not reflect the current backlog of applications at the USPTO.
Not surprisingly, the domain LTYIVABHTTW.com was also registered at the time, not by the Chinese company but by a trademark squatter who probably believed they could flip this domain name.
Unfortunately, the Chinese brand owners have no need for these domains as their brands are guaranteed to be unique! 😀
Perhaps a Chinese brand creator would be interested, but don’t hold your breath.
