To clarify, my question isn't on how to protect myself from phishing. What I'm curious about is how exactly software can identify whether or not a website is designed for phishing, ignoring word identifiers/scanners to looking for spam/phishing sounding material.
Yes, this email is a scam. Ignore it!

I work at a major web hosting firm, and our customers receive these emails on a frequent basis. There are a number of characteristics that are visible from this perspective which confirm that they are a scam:


The emails are never sent by a recognizable, reputable domain registrar. Most of them use generic names, such as "Asian Domain Registration Service" in your email, "China domain registration center", or the like. The emails never have senders, headers, or signatures which explicitly link them with a registrar, and there is usually not even any accredited registrar with the right name.
The domain registrations are never being made by a recognizable company or organization. You've obscured the relevant name as "Some Other Corp, Ltd" here, but the names are often generic ("Foo Trading Co") or incomprehensible ("FANGSHI Co"). Attempts to identify or contact them are never successful (or find only unrelated companies).
They are frequently sent in relation to a domain name which would be meaningless under an Asian top-level domain. Many of them involve domain names containing names of people or locations — for example, these types of emails might claim that a Chinese trading company is attempting to register the domain "johndoe-hardware.hk" or "newyork-blahblah.asia". There is no apparent logic to these registrations.
Despite supposedly coming from many different registrars, these emails always follow a very similar format. There are multiple templates, so the wording can vary, but the formula is always precisely the same. In particular, the domain names being registered are ALWAYS only under "Asian" TLDs (typically .asia, .cn, .hk, .tw, and .in), never under any other TLDs. Additionally, many of these emails also claim that the bundle includes an "Internet keyword" or "Internet trademark", which doesn't even exist.


We have advised a very large number of our customers to disregard these emails, and not once has any of the domains mentioned actually been purchased by the individual or company that was supposedly attempting to acquire them. None of the people who have written about receiving these emails online has had this outcome, either. Everything points to these emails being a widespread scam!



Further reading:


Canadian Trade Commissioner Service: Domain name registration in China
SCAMWatch (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission): Think carefully about unsolicited offers to register domain names overseas


I can only post two links, but you'll find a bunch more if you do a Google search for "Chinese domain scam" or something of the sort. It's widely attested.
