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As part of its plan to dramatically expand the Internet's
infrastructure beyond .com (and other pre-existing generic top
level domains (gTLDs)), ICANN, the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers, promised brand owners that a variety of
additional trademark protection mechanisms would be put in place.
One such mechanism is the Trademark Clearinghouse.
As proposed by ICANN, the Trademark Clearinghouse is intended to
function as an information repository and offer authentication and
validation services for trademark data. The Clearinghouse will
serve as a single database of authenticated registered trademarks
and will eliminate the need for trademark holders to register their
marks in many databases as new gTLDs are launched. ICANN will
require that every new gTLD operator utilize the Clearinghouse and
conduct both a Trademark Claims and a Sunrise Process Trademark
holders and registry operators of new gTLDs are expected to use on
the Trademark Clearinghouse to support rights protection mechanisms
for the new gTLD system. The Trademark Clearinghouse will be
designed to be available globally, with capabilities for validating
trademark data from multiple global regions. As a result of these
functions, the Trademark Clearinghouse is expected to play an
important role in the launch of the new gTLD Program and in
ensuring ongoing protection of trademark rights under the new
scheme. But who will run the Trademark Clearinghouse and how will
it actually work? These are some of the questions that brand owners
have been asking, which until now have largely gone unanswered by
ICANN.
On Friday, ICANN announced that it has selected Deloitte and IBM to perform
certain services in connection with implementation of the Trademark
Clearinghouse. Though final agreements have not been signed, ICANN
expects that Deloitte Enterprise Risk Services (a department of
Deloitte Bedrijfsrevisoren BV ovve CVBA) will serve as provider of
the Trademark Clearinghouse's authenticator/validator services.
ICANN expects that IBM (International Business Machines of Belgium
sprl / bvba) will provide technical database administration
services to the Clearinghouse. As announced, both Deloitte and IBM
are expected to subcontract IPClearingHouse BVBA (aka CHIP) in
order to facilitate theses services.
ICANN also released information about the anticipated pricing
for the Trademark Clearinghouse services. In an implementation
document entitled Preliminary Cost Model, ICANN set forth expected
fees for services to rightsholders, services to registries and
ancillary services. For trademark owners, the fee for initial
authentication and validation services is expected to be less than
$150 US per submission. Annual renewal fees for Clearinghouse
records are expected at a percentage of the initial price. The low
fee requires that submissions be inexpensive and straightforward to
process, and more complex circumstances and additional services
will require additional fees. For registries, ICANN anticipates
that a set-up fee of between $7,000 – 10,000 US will be
due per TLD registry. The set-up fee would cover Sunrise and
Trademark Claims processes, as well as assistance in integration
and testing.
In other gTLD news, Google announced in a blog post on Thursday that it
has applied for a number of gTLDs, including .google, .youtube,
.docs and .lol (among others). ICANN is currently scheduled to
publish a list of all applied-for gTLDs on
June 13th.
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