Question

What trademark can be registered in the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH)?

Answer

The Trademark Clearinghouse accepts any trademark which is:

• still valid in the trademark register (not expired, rejected, cancelled or withdrawn)
• in use by the trademark owner, in the class it is registered
• court validated mark or a marks protected by statute or treaty are accepted as well.

A trademark may contain international characters, but not a combination of character sets: a Chinese trademark is accepted, a trademark having both a Chinese word and an English word will not be accepted.

An image trademark (visual trademark or device mark) is accepted as well, as long as the image contains characters that are allowed in domain names.

Trademarks containing a dot (.) are only accepted if the dot is not part of a domain extension (apple.pear is allowed, apple.com isn't).

For more details, please refer to sections 2.2.5 and 4 of the TMCH Guidelines.