This paper focuses on the experimental determination of the electrical resistance (R) of commercial high temperature superconductor (HTS) coated conductors (CCs) at currents well above the critical current. The major novelty of this work rests on the unique experimental capability of applying constant current pulses in the sample (up to 1000 A) for durations as short as 15 mu s, which allows very precise control of the amount of energy dissipated in the sample (the Joule effect), as well as the resulting temperature rise. By varying the applied current and the duration of the pulses, we show that we can achieve a relatively accurate characterization of R(I, T) simply from the measured dynamical V-I characteristics of the CCs. The resistance model obtained in this way is very important, as R(I, T) is the most fundamental design parameter in many practical HTS applications, especially in fault current limiters.