Global Protected Marks List

GMPL is the abbreviation for the Global Protected Marks List or Globally Protected Marks List, which was primarily created to provide additional protection to the IP holders? It was basically recommended by the Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT), a team formed by the Intellectual Property Constituency of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in its preliminary report on Trademark Protection in New gTLDs on 29 May 2009, in its several proposed solutions. It suggested the creation of an IP Clearing house wherein the Rights holders could submit their IP to the clearing house so that the rights holders are alerted whenever there is a registration using their marks.

Objective

The main intention behind the creation of GPML was to protect the well-known marks at the top and second levels. The IRT recommended GPML in a view to address the concerns of the trademark owners who had pitched for the establishment of a ‘White List’ or a ‘Reserved List’ for trademarks.

GPML benefits

The Globally Protected Marks List would allow rights holders of worldwide marks to add them into a white list. This in turn helps them to have a good amount of protection of the use of their mark at the top and second levels. [1] One important thing to note is that the benefits of GPML are limited only to the trademark owners and not to their licensees. Thus, all the domain name registrations that are waiting to be included into the GPML must be issued in the name of the trademark owner. GPML Requirements

• To gain the benefits of GPML, trademark owners need to have an ownership of 200 trademark registrations with national recognition and should have GPM issued in a minimum of 90 countries.
• The trademark owners should have all the registrations issued on or before November 1, 2008
• The owners needs to state that the registration for the applied GPM is not owned by any other party
• The registration of the second level domain names needs to be identical to the GPM in 50 TLDs

Functioning of GPML

The IP Clearinghouse is charged with validating all the data regarding the GPML application. Once the IP Clearinghouse finishes with the validation and sums up the initial GPML, the ICANN publishes it before the request for proposal or RPF issues. This publishing by ICANN is done beforehand so that there are no potential applicants to take the GPML even if they want to do so. For the continued qualification of marks, the trademark owner needs to sign an affidavit or declaration attached with the initial documented evidence and the annual validation. Once the process of initial application is concluded, the process of including new applications for marks to be included in the GPML takes place on a rolling basis. It is ICANN which decides to accept new gTLD applications on a rolling basis or before every new gTLD application round.