The Trademark Clearinghouse functions

Upstream of the launch of the first new extensions, the Trademark Clearinghouse enables trademark holders or their consultants to register their intellectual property rights. After checking, this data is stored centrally and used by the new extension ‘registries’ for processing the priority applications you submit to register your domain names (during what are known as ‘Sunrise’ periods). This centralized process considerably reduces the administrative workload and the associated cost for trademark owners: a single registration of each trademark with the Trademark Clearinghouse will make it possible to avoid some of the specific costs associated with each ‘Sunrise’ period.

If you have gone to the trouble of registering your trademarks with the Trademark Clearinghouse, you will be alerted if any third party tries to register a domain name corresponding to your brand. Likewise, the person applying for the domain name will receive an alert telling them that the domain name they wish to register corresponds to a trademark. And lastly, every operator of a new gTLD will be required to give you, as the trademark owner, priority in registering domain names related to your trademark or associated with it (as long as you apply for domains during the priority ‘sunrise’ periods). For example, the registry for .shoes will offer Nike the opportunity to register nike.shoes before the names are opened to the public.