Court validated marks

General

Court validated marks refer to a mark that has been validated by a court of law or other judicial proceeding at the national level, such as unregistered (common law) marks and/or well-known marks. In the case of a mark validated by judicial proceedings, the judicial authority must have existed as a competent jurisdiction as of the date of the order or judgment. Any referenced authority must have the indicia of authenticity and must on its face confer the specified rights (i.e., the documentation must be sufficient to show validation of the mark without the need for the Clearinghouse to consult outside resources).
The following marks are not considered court-validated marks and will not be eligible for inclusion in the Clearinghouse:

• Trademark applications;
• US state trademarks;
• International trademark applications made via the Madrid system
• Registered trademarks that were subject to successful invalidation, cancellation or rectification proceedings

The following are not considered court-validated marks but might be eligible for inclusion in the Clearinghouse under another type of trademark:

• Registered trademarks;
• Marks protected under statute or treaty;
• Other marks that constitute intellectual property.

Information to be provided to the Clearinghouse

The following information needs to be submitted to the Clearinghouse in order to verify a record that relates to a court-validated mark:

• Name of the mark corresponds to the name of the mark as indicated by the court order;
• Reference number corresponds to the number of the court order;
• Date of protection corresponds to date of which the decision of the court order was taken or published;
• Country corresponds to country in which the court order is applicable;
• Description of goods and services corresponds to the goods and/or services for which the mark is protected;
• Court name corresponds to the official title of the court where the court order has been taken;
• Court order corresponds to the copy of the official court order itself;
• Status of the Trademark Holder (owner/licensee/assignee) corresponds to the capacity of the Trademark Holder that is submitting the Trademark Record;
• Organization corresponds with the name of the Trademark Holder when the Trademark Holder is company or an organization;
• Full name corresponds with the name of the Trademark Holder when the Trademark Holder is an individual;
• Address of the Trademark Holder corresponds with the full address (i.e. street, city, postal code, country of residence) of the Trademark Holders exactly as recorded with the trademark office, abbreviations or other differences are not valid, e.g. "str." instead of "street"; and
• Contact information of the Trademark Holder corresponds to the phone/fax number of the Trademark Holder. All of the requested information is mandatory.

Documentary evidence

As described above, the Trademark Holder or Trademark Agent is obligated to upload a copy of the official court order on which the corresponding mark is based.
In addition to the above, the following documents should be provided when applicable:

• Licensee declaration

A license declaration must be provided when 1) the Trademark Holder has indicated that he/she is a licensee of a mark. A template can be downloaded from the Website.

• Assignee declaration

An assignee declaration should be provided when 1) the Trademark Holder or Trademark Agent has indicated that he/she is an assignee of a mark. A template can be downloaded from the Website.
In the event that one would forget to submit any of the documents and the Clearinghouse cannot verify the provided information or other documents need to be provided, the Clearinghouse will request to provide these documents within 20 calendar days after the moment of verification and prior to taking a final determination to accept a Trademark Record. In the event that no documents have been provided, the Trademark Record will not be accepted.

Exceptions

The following, even if court-validated, will not be accepted by the Clearinghouse:

• Any court validated mark that includes a top level extensions such as “icann.org” or “.icann”;
• Any court validated trademark mark starting with a “dot” (.) or containing a “dot” (.);
• Any court validated mark that does not contain any letters, words, numerals, or DNS-valid characters; and
• Any state or city court-validated mark.