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Deloitte
OCTOBER 2013
Trademark Clearinghouse
a cyber revolution?
The Internet will soon be undergoing a significant makeover, with hundreds of new domain extensions going live later this year. In addition to well-known domains such as .com and .co.uk, the Internet will also be home to
branded, geographic and generic domains such as .nike, .london and .food.
hile new domains present great new possibilities for brands, concerns
have been raised by the
intellectual property community about how trademarks can be protected during this period of significant change online.
In response, ICANN – the body that coordinates IP addresses and the domain name system – has launched the Trademark Clearinghouse. Operated by Deloitte, the Trademark Clearinghouse is a unique, central database of validated trademarks. It offers brand owners a global solution to assist in defending their trademarks across the hundreds of new gTLDs that will go live from this autumn.
Since this is the first time that global trademarks can be protected on the Internet, it is crucial that the intellectual property community (and wider legal sector) understands the function of the new mechanisms in place for trademark owners. Interestingly, where these matters used to be handled solely by domain registry services, we are now seeing more
solicitors handling online IP protection for their clients.
To find out more, Lawyer Monthly speaks to Jan Corstens, Partner at Deloitte and Project Director of
the Trademark
Clearinghouse (TMCH). Please introduce your role.
I am a partner in the Deloitte Belgian office and lead a multidisciplinary team that provides as one-stop shop to help companies with their Intellectual property (IP), including defining overall IP strategy and protection through patent registration.
I am also active in providing services for the Internet community including Top Level Domain (TLD) launch procedures, such as Sunrise, and helping trademark owners to set up their own TLD.
can you please tell me about the trademark clearinghouse?
ICANN’s Trademark Clearinghouse is the cornerstone of the mandatory Intellectual