Trademark Clearinghouse has issued 500,000 claims notices.
The Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) announced today that it has issued 500,000 claims notices to prospective registrants of domains under new top level domain names. The notices are shown when someone tries to register a domain that matches a trademark or trademark string submitted to the database.
Here’s what the claims notices look like.
That’s an impressively high number, but what exactly does it mean? Without more details, it could be meaningless.
After all, there are a lot of generic terms in the database. These generic terms are ones that will be popular in many TLDs, so they get looked up a lot. If 50 people pre-order the same generic domain, they’re all getting notices.
The notices are also delivered to trademark holders when they register their domains if it’s after sunrise. But TMCH says 95% of the notices result in an abandoned registration, so I doubt this accounts for much.
TMCH is bragging about the “deterring effect” of these notices. But are they deterring or chilling? Are they persuading people who are trying to register domains like money.TLD to choose a different domain?
I suspect it’s a bit of both. It would be great to see the actual data.
I know I’m personally responsible for at least a couple hundred of those from my research — and I was doing it all by hand.
It means the small mom and pop shops, don’t want to lose their house in legal risk, and will opt for .com, as it states very clearly that you are agreeing to the TM, and all it’s risks. Who wants to think they are signing their legal rights over a domain registration. Could be the nail, in the coffin for the G’s. There are many more marks to be registered in that database. For some keywords, I had to scan thru 3-4 different parties, and I would be one of those stats up there, that said screw this.
In addition to data mining, one would expect each TM owner in the TMCH to have taken a look to see if they got what they pay for.
For the TMCH to claim that “notice served, domain not registered” means “infringer deterred” is not a conclusion supported by the data, and speaks to the unsophistication and, quite frankly what should be disqualifying simplemindedness, on the part of the TMCH.
Or perhaps they know and it’s just PR, so they hope people don’t ask further questions.
An organization responsible for the operation of a significant piece of domain name system architecture should not be prone to PR fluff.
One significant peculiarity of these notices is that they’re handled differently by different registrars. In some cases, the TMCH notices aren’t shown at all but simply derail the purchase.
On several occasions, I have placed a bulk order on [Registrar A] only to have one or two domains be excluded from my purchase as if by some glitch. These non-purchases show up in the email invoice, but no TMCH notice was displayed in the registration path.
Very quickly, I realized that these domains were being excluded by the registrar simply because it couldn’t accommodate the TMCH notice in its registration path. So I went to [Registrar B] and registered the domains that had been excluded from my order at [Registrar A]. In doing so, I paid a higher price, but the registrations went through (after being shown a TMCH notice or two).
I’ve noticed similar problems when I place more than one domain with a notice in my cart. If I decline one it empties my entire cart.
Seems to vary a lot based on the registrar. What I noticed was partially unfulfilled orders with no TMCH notice displayed whatsoever. Many people who see domain registration failures in their email invoice will assume a dead end when, in fact, the domain can be registered elsewhere simply by clicking through a TMCH notice.
The “TMCH solution” developed by some registrars to the problems involved in interfacing with the TMCH was, instead of displaying the notice, to render the domain name unregistrable after checking to see that there was a TMCH claim. That is another factor which renders the TMCH puffery to be further BS.