urlICANN announced that it will be launching the Trademark Clearinghouse, a global repository of trademark data.

ICANN says it the clearinghouse is the first of its kind in the domain name sector.
Once the clearinghouse is launched on March 26, 2013, verified rights holders can avail of a collection of services that will protect their rights as the mark holder.

The TC operations will have two distinct functions. One side will handle the validation of trademark rights. Anyone who holds the rights to a trademark may submit their request online at trademark-clearinghouse.com. The submission will be verified by Deloitte Enterprise Risk Services.

The second part is the database administration, for which ICANN is working with IBM. The provision of data from this database to the gTLD registrars will be active sometime in 2013.

There are quite a few advantages of having their mark entered into the TC. Rights holders will get access to sunrise registration. This means they get to register their marks as domain names before the same offer is made public.

Another advantage is that the rights holder will get notifications if a domain is registered matching the rights holder’s mark.

These services are a part of the required approval process for all the new gTLDs. If you want to learn more about the clearinghouse and how it has become a critical part of the verification and approval process for gTLD applications, Deloitte is holding a series of educational seminars in February and March. You can find these events listed on the TC website mentioned above.

One of these seminars is an online webinar on March 6, 2013. It will take you through an overview of the Clearinghouse project and clear all your doubts with a Q&A session. Last date for registration is March 5, 2013.

ICANN Announces Trademark Clearinghouse

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