LOS ANGELES - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced in a press release that it has completed actions in preparation for the renewal of the Certificate Authority (CA) of the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH-CA). The TMCH-CA is set to expire on 23 July 2023. For continued operation, a new TMCH-CA certificate has been generated and published, and is now available for testing by registries, registrars, trademark holders, and agents. This new certificate must be used by all systems to successfully interoperate with other systems for functions related to the TMCH.

The new certificates and certificate revocation lists (CRL) are available here:

• The new TMCH-CA certificate
• The new CRL
• The new pilot TMCH-CA certificate
• The new pilot CRL
• SMD Testing Files generated with the new pilot TMCH-CA certificate

The switch to the new TMCH-CA and CRL will occur on 15 February 2023 at 18:00 UTC. This will preempt the need to reissue the Trademark Validator (TMV) certificate, which currently expires on 31 March 2023. All trademark holders and agents will receive new Signed Mark Data (SMD) files on 15 February 2023. After the new TMCH-CA is in use, these files will be required for use with the TMCH. Older SMD files signed with the current TMCH-CA will no longer work.

On 15 February 2023, the URLs to the active certificate and CRL will be changed to the new files. Organizations that do not have automated processes to fetch these files nightly will need to download them manually.

• The active TMCH-CA certificate
• The active CRL