Trademark Clearinghouse Agent

What is it?

The internet is changing. ICANN, the organisation responsible for the global domain name system, is running a process that will see the creation of nearly 1400 new registries. As part of the process, it has mandated the creation of a Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH), for which ICANN has appointed Deloitte Belgium as validator and IBM as the technical operator.

The TMCH is a database of verified trademark information. It is a platform for effective rights protection and will allow brand owners to deposit their trademark information into a centralised register for a one off fee, rather than within each of potentially hundreds of individual registries during Sunrise periods.

How it can help you

Sunrise

Placing one trademark along with Proof of Use (a signed declaration along with one sample of use) into the TMCH will give you access to all new gTLD Sunrises for a minimum of 30 days. More information

Trademark Claims

Simply having a verified trademark in the TMCH will enable to you benefit from the TMCH claims service, which will inform you if anyone registers your mark as a domain name in any of the new gTLDs for a period of at least 90 days following Sunrise. More information

What we can do for you

Choosing Own Identity as your TMCH agent means we handle all the administrative strain for you, allowing you to concentrate on your core business as a brand or legal professional. We have a track record of success in managing our clients IP through domain name launches, having managed thousands of marks for clients through the .xxx, .eu and .tel sunrises. Our pre-validation service ensured optimum levels of success for our clients during the .xxx sunrise and our team is composed of experts in IP and domain name management.

Own Identity’s TMCH offering is more than just software as a service – we work in partnership with our clients to offer personalised, proactive, consultative and successful IP-based solutions.

We Will:

• Liaise with the TMCH on your behalf, saving you money and time.
• Advise you on the right trademark to place in the TMCH for maximum protection: you need to match the marks that you use to the registries of importance to you.
• Analyse the Mission, Purpose and Policies of all the hundreds of new registries and suggest a short list that may be of interest to you.
• Pre-validate all trademark information for the TMCH, checking data and eliminating inconsistencies to save you re-submission costs.
• Assist you to manage your cash flow and billing through flexible, practical invoicing. You won’t need to prepay the TMCH or use your credit cards.
• Create and submit the supporting documents requested by the TMCH including Proof of Use.
• Store and manage your Signed Marked Data (SMD) files, which are essential for the registration process, for up to 5 years. This means we can support you with fast, cost-effective registrations.
• Monitor the launch date of every new registry, alerting you to the dates and rules of their Sunrise schemes.
• Provide you with an accurate domain name watching service across the new gTLDs.

Additional Services

Sunrise Registrations

We will be assisting clients to file for domain name registrations in new gTLDs based on trademarks they hold in the TMCH.

Watching

We are creating a new gTLD watching service. This will provide you with a monthly report of newly registered domain names which match search parameters of your choice, including wildcards and character substitution (exact match only for IDNs).