Garrett SaundryAs most trandemark owners know, it can be costly to defensively register domains for all of your trademarks, especially considering the fact that for some types of businesses, pharmaceutical companies for example, this can mean hundreds of domains.
With the imminent introduction of new TLD’s, ICANN is considering introducing a trademark database. 
It’s already quite costly if you’re defensively registering your trademarks under various country codes as well as the standard com/org/net, but what happens if there are suddenly 500 new domain suffixes to cover that weren’t there before? Domain administration costs would go through the roof and no matter how hard you try, it would be nearly impossible to protect all your brands accross all of the new domain extensions. Sooner or later a squatter will beat you to it and you’ll be looking at either paying them to get your domain back or costly URDP proceedings.
This proposed new IP Clearinghouse would create a centralized database of Intellectual Property rights to simplify trademark protection. Any attempt to register a trademark under a new suffix would be blocked until the applicant for the domain could prove that it was a legitimate request.
A decision on this is expected later this year.
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Read More:
TechNewsReview.com – ICANN Considers IP Clearinghouse to Combat Cybersquatting
http://technewsreview.com.au/article.php?article=8657
SansBlog.com – Old Trademarks, New Internet (Part 1)
http://www.sansblog.com/?tag=ip-clearinghouse
The IP Clearinghouse *is* good for trademark holders, and not just for the reasons you cite. It will also make it a lot cheaper, because for a one-time fee (estimated at around $125) a trademark holder’s information will be available to all registries and registrars, who can implement low-cost trademark protections solutions such as blocking and notification services.
It’s also very good for the new TLD registries, who can use the very granular data (there are 37 different pieces of information associated with each trademark registration) to craft policies that are meaningful to that namespace.
-Antony