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TRADEMARK CLEARINGHOUSE IN THE SPOTLIGHT


RIGHT


for most companies simply registering their trademark under every extension is no longer a feasible solution for protecting their rights. But completely ignoring all those new extensions certainly isn’t a good idea either. It will be important to pick the extensions that are signifi cant


W 38 for the trademark owner and


its business. In all cases, a registration in the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) is needed as a fi rst step.


At the time of writing, the TMCH holds records for 28,611 trademarks. Once a trademark is


Trademarks & Brands Online


FIRST TIME


Registering trademarks in the TMCH is an important opening move for companies towards protecting their brand. TBO spoke to Belgian TMCH agent bNamed.net about how it can help.


ith more than 1,000 new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) launching this year and next,


registered in the TMCH, a trademark owner can enforce its trademark in three diff erent ways. First, every new extension will start with a sunrise period lasting at least 30 days (but usually 60 days), in which trademark owners with a TMCH record will have priority over registering their marks.


Once the sunrise period is over, the ‘claims service’ begins, lasting 90 days. T e TMCH will send a notice to anyone trying to register a domain name matching a TMCH record that they might be cybersquatting. It is still possible to register the domain name, but a registrant will not be able to argue later that he wasn’t aware that this trademark existed. If the domain


Volume 3, Issue 2


name is indeed registered by someone else, the trademark holder will receive a warning.


T e third service off ered by the TMCH also starts once the sunrise period is over. It is called the ‘extended claims service’, which works as long as the TMCH registration is kept active. It’s a bit diff erent to the regular ‘claims service’, because only the trademark owner will receive a warning when the trademark is registered as a domain name by someone else. T e person who registers the domain name won’t get a warning that he’s infringing someone else’s trademark. At the moment, 33,034 of those warnings have been sent out by the TMCH.


www.trademarksandbrandsonline.com


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