To protect themselves from intellectual property theft before the rollout of...

to protect your trademark from cybersquatting, registering with the Trademark Clearinghouse is the first critical step for trademark owners to protect their brands,” said SIIA Vice President-IP Policy and Enforcement Keith Kupferschmid. “Failure to register with the Clearinghouse makes it easier for thieves to purchase a domain that uses a trademarked name -- essentially stealing that trademark from its rightful owner.” ICANN posted a video Friday (http://bit.ly/102PDK8) explaining the “initial evaluation results” for gTLD applications. In the video, ICANN’s new gTLD Director Christine Willett called ICANN’s recent unveiling of initial evaluation results (http://bit.ly/YupOnQ) “a tremendous milestone” for ICANN. The first 30 applications have been reviewed, and results have been posted -- except for the few whose applications have been held up for “primarily administrative reasons,” she said. Applications that do not pass may be eligible for extended evaluation, during which ICANN will review the application’s financial eligibility, technical and operations eligibility and registry services eligibility, Willett said. The first 108 applications to be evaluated are internationalized domain names (IDNs), she said: ICANN prioritized IDNs “to serve the internationalization of the Internet and make the Internet more accessible to individuals in parts of the world who are not familiar with the Latin script.” Willett said she expects the first applicants who successfully complete the remainder of the application process to have the new domains as early as May or June.