As previously reported, a Trademark Clearinghouse database experienced technical problems a week and a half ago, causing a 10-hour outage in its claim notice information service, which prevents domain name registrars from registering names that match a commercial name that already exists and is included in the Trademark Clearinghouse repository.
Some expressed concern that the technical issues may have allowed domain names that are protected trademarks to be registered, which could harm the legal interests of trademark owners. However, ICANN representatives have dismissed these worries. The corporation’s official report says that the outage was a result of a sudden unprompted reboot of several nodes. It is still unclear why this happened, but ICANN has assured users that the incident did not affect the domain name registration process.
