BOSTON, March 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — TM.Biz, a brand protection platform for trademark owners, announces a TMCH-in-a-Box portal for ICANN's Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). The TMCH-in-a-Box portal allows brand owners and trademark lawyers to manage the processes associated with protecting their trademarks in new top-level-domains (TLDs), including pre-validation of trademarks to ensure first-time success for submission to the TMCH.
Anyone becoming a Trademark Agent for the TMCH will benefit from using the TMCH-in-a-Box portal. Interacting with the TMCH is not just a one-time event: TMCH-in-a-Box also includes monitoring of status updates; document requests; up-coming Sunrise Periods; and forwarding of Trademark Claims notices matching the trademark.
"It will be important to provide accurate submissions to the TMCH. The rules are different from what was required in past Sunrise Periods," said Tom Barrett, founder of TM.Biz. "TMCH-in-a-Box solves this by pre-validating all submissions against online trademark databases and ensuring required documentation is collected before submission to the TMCH."
ICANN has received over 1,900 applications for new TLDs; the first new TLD is expected to be recommended by ICANN starting on April 23, with hundreds more expected in the coming months. The Trademark Clearinghouse was created primarily for registered trademark owners to gain the approval to participate in the Sunrise Period for the new TLDs.
No credit card or bank wire is required to use TM.Biz. TMCH-in-a-Box saves money, effort and time for trademark lawyers and agents compared to using the TMCH directly. Trademark lawyers will have just one chance to correct applications before being assessed an extra fee. With TMCH-in-a-Box, users can elect to submit data from the official records to ensure first-time acceptance by the TMCH.
TM.Biz also helps with the next steps after the TMCH. Manage the Sunrise process with an alert service of up-coming Sunrises and management of the Sunrise tokens called Signed-Mark-Data files. Also, manage other Rights Protection Mechanisms from the TM.Biz portal, such as the Domain Protected Marks List (DPML) offered for the Donuts' TLDs.
There are several TMCH-in-a-Box pricing models to choose from:
- No pre-payment required and we pay the TMCH fees for you. Users utilize TM.Biz as their Trademark Agent to the TMCH and are invoiced for trademarks pre-validated and submitted to the TMCH.
- You pay the TMCH fees yourself via the TMCH pre-paid account. TMCH-in-a-Box is useful even for law firms, corporations or registrars who have decided to open their own pre-paid Trademark Agent account with the TMCH. Use TM.Biz to pre-validate and manage all of your trademarks for a small annual fee.
- Pre-Validation only. Users would use TM.Biz for pre-validation only. They would then submit applications directly to the TMCH.
There are no setup fees or monthly minimums required to have a TM.Biz account. Pricing is based on a per-trademark basis plus any TMCH fees. All TM.Biz users will be verified as belonging to, or serving the trademark industry, including
- Large corporations that handle trademark filings with in-house legal counsel
- Law firms managing trademark matters for several clients
- Domain name registrars and brand protection providers
Interested users should visit www.tm.biz to request their free account.
About TM.Biz
TM.Biz was formed in 2010 as a brand protection platform for trademark owners. It has a real-time interface to over 75 online trademark databases to facilitate pre-validation. Past projects have included serving as official validation agent for the launch of the .PW TLD and providing validation services for the launch of the .XXX TLD. TM.Biz also offers sunrise management services for Top-Level-Domains requiring customized services not provided by the TMCH. For more, please visit .
Paula Kibbe
Email
508-930-5434