The owners of trademark rights, whose trademarks are verified and registered through the Trademark Clearinghouse have the right to register domains at the Sunrise Periods of all New Top Level Domains.
Trademark Clearinghouse not only protects brand with this claims service, but also with a so-called Sunrise Service during a period of thirty days before domain names are offered to the general public. With this service the owners of the trademark can protect the domain name that matches their trademark, and a valid trademark registration with Trademark is essential for doing so.
Since March 26, 2013 the owners of a trademark can submit their brands.
Until now, the introduction of a brand name with Top Level Domains included the right to priority registrations. Furthermore, both introduction and registration could be completed in one step. From here on forward this will no longer be possible. Anyone who wants to register a domain during the “Sunrise Period” will have to register with Trademark Clearinghouse. When the registration with Trademark Clearinghouse has been successfully completed, the brand owner will have the right to register all of the possibly more than one thousand domains during the given “Sunrise Period”.
You probably also own important names that are not protected under a brand name. The guidelines of the Trademark Clearinghouse allow for other branding rights to be considered. Secura GmbH, an official agent of Trademark Clearinghouse and ICANN accredited Registrar, will gladly advise on how to obtain such branding rights and have the best possible chance to have them accepted as such.
A large registrar has analyzed past “Sunrise Periods” and came to the conclusion that registrations during the “Sunrise Period” had a 40-50% rejection rate. The rejection rate is not due to applications for inadmissible Trademarks rejected by an approving institution but rather to incorrect records and applications that were filled out incorrectly. "We have vast experience dealing with brands and trademarks and the respective approving institutions," says Hans-Peter Oswald, CEO of ICANN accredited Registrar Secura. "The up to date rejection rate of Secura with Sunrise Periods has been lower than one percent."
Marc Müller
http://www.domainregistry.de/...