TMCH Tech Summit Kicks Off Today

If you read our last gTLD Strategy post, you’re probably sick of hearing about the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) by now. But today is an important day in the ongoing development and implementation of this aspect of the New gTLD Program.

Today and tomorrow, ICANN is hosting a technical summit at the Deloitte offices in Brussels (Deloitte and IBM were selected to develop the TMCH), where representatives from registries and registrars will have the chance to weigh in on many of the technical aspects of the TMCH. This meeting was the result of widespread demand expressed by these two groups during the ICANN Public Meeting in Prague in June. Essentially, their argument boiled down to, “We’re the ones who need to use the TMCH, so we should get a say in how it works.”

While trademark owners will be the ones to register their marks in the TMCH, it will be new gTLD registries that need to interface with the database as part of the Rights Protection Mechanisms they offer, the Trademark Claims and Sunrise services, which we describe in detail in last week’s post. Unfortunately, this technical summit was announced a mere two weeks ago, leaving little time for registry and registrar representatives to book their travel arrangements for Brussels.

It will be interesting to see how the discussion that takes place during the summit today and tomorrow shapes the final version of the TMCH. We’ll likely receive an update about the progress during the next ICANN Public Meeting in Toronto, which runs October 14 through 19. And you can be sure we’ll post those updates here on the blog.