Can a POU expire ? (5 year POU revalidation)

As per the ICANN requirements, an update on the POU documentation is required once every five years. As of the POU expiry date, the SMD file can no longer be used for our Sunrise service. Therefore, the Proof Of Use (signed declaration and sample) will expire 5 years after it has been submitted and will need to be resubmitted to maintain a valid POU. In case your documents are (almost) older than 5 years, you will be required to re-verify the validity and actuality of the uploaded sample and declaration of use.

To do so, a bulk POU revalidation page has been launched on our TMCH web interface. You can access this page by navigating to your TMCH account and clicking on the button "bulk validate POU" at the bottom right of the "Mark overview" page. The possibility to revalidate your POU will only be available in case you have POU documents that are almost 5 years or older. Please note that if no action is taken 60 days after the POU expiry date, the POU status will automatically change to ‘EXPIRED’, the pop-up message will be removed and the associated SMD file will be revoked.

For further details on the different steps to revalidate your POU documents, please refer to our manual.

In case you have any further questions related to the revalidation of the POU, feel free to contact us directly by raising a ticket to our dedicated Customer Support system by clicking on "GET SUPPORT" on the TMCH interface or by sending an email to support[at]trademark-clearinghouse[dot]com.