.brand

The proposed .brand top-level domain represents the broad concept of identity and recognition, the name, look, and reputation by which a person, product, project, or organization becomes known. Building and presenting an identity is ordinary work for nearly everyone with a public presence, from a local shop to an independent creator. Intercap Registry proposes to operate .brand as an open namespace, available for registration by the general public without restriction. Intended registrants include individuals, creators, businesses, and organizations of all kinds that want a clear, memorable address for presenting who they are and what they offer. Intended users are members of the general public seeking those registrants and their content. Intercap Registry will make .brand names available worldwide through ICANN-accredited registrars, promote awareness and adoption of the namespace, publish its registration policies ahead of launch, operate the TLD openly, respond promptly to reports of abuse, and comply with applicable safeguards. Demand for this category is sustainable: presenting a recognizable identity is a standing requirement for businesses, products, and public-facing projects across every sector, and is not tied to any trend, technology, or single company.

Mission and Purpose The gTLD "Brand" is a purpose-driven generic top-level domain designed as a globally verified, trusted namespace accessible exclusively to legitimate brand owners. Building on the proven success of the Chinese-script "商标" TLD—which has established a secure, authenticated environment for trademark holders in Chinese-speaking markets—the Brand TLD extends this verification-based model worldwide. Its core mission is to provide every verified brand owner with trusted web links leading to genuine goods and services. A Brand domain acts as a seal of approval, assuring consumers they are engaging with a genuine, validated brand, while empowering owners to combat impersonation, counterfeiting, and cybersquatting in the global digital ecosystem. Target Registrants Registration under the Brand TLD is strictly restricted to entities that can demonstrate valid, current brand rights. Acceptable evidence includes nationally or regionally registered trademarks, unregistered brand identities backed by formal judicial rulings or administrative determinations, marks protected under the Madrid System and marks successfully validated by the TMCH. All applicants—multinational corporations, small businesses, non-profits, or individual entrepreneurs—must complete a brand-rights verification process administered by the registry before a domain is activated. This strict gatekeeping ensures every active domain within the Brand TLD is backed by a genuine brand asset, creating a trustworthy global directory. Target Users Users are global consumers who need a simple, reliable way to identify authentic brand websites. Visiting a domain like brandname.brand confirms that the operator’s brand claim has been independently validated, drastically reducing the risks of phishing, counterfeits, and fraud. Activities to Fulfill the Mission 1. Rigorous Brand-Rights Verification: Establish and enforce comprehensive registry verification policies requiring detailed examination of official trademark certificates, records from trademark databases across all jurisdictions worldwide, and supporting legal evidence, executed by a specialized validation team and augmented by automated cross checks with global IP databases. 2. Rights Protection Mechanisms: Implement robust Sunrise and Trademark Claims periods in complete alignment with ICANN consensus policies, complemented by ongoing registry-level verification. Long-Term Sustainability The gTLD "Brand" possesses a highly resilient framework for long-term sustainability, directly rooted in the permanent, borderless market demand for robust brand protection. As global digital commerce continuous to expand rapidly, the escalating threats of brand impersonation and digital deception present an increasingly severe challenge to multinational enterprises. A rigorously validated, exclusive namespace delivers a sustainable, cost-effective, and definitive trust solution for brand owners worldwide. This permanent, non-cyclical enterprise value drives stable, predictable registration volumes and consistently high annual renewal rates. The registry will seamlessly replicate its proven operational and policy-validation model from the Chinese-script "商标" TLD—a successful precedent where enhanced consumer trust and significantly mitigated infringement risks heavily incentivize brand owners to retain their domain portfolios over the long term—and transition these best practices entirely to the Brand gTLD. Future registration and renewal revenues will robustly and continuously fund core long-term operations, including expert-led brand verification, global marketing outreach, infrastructure security upgrades, and dynamic policy evolution. Armed with a robust governance framework and specialized expertise in brand-DNS convergence, the Brand TLD will stabilize its position as a highly credible, sustainable, and indispensable global domain foundation for the global brand economy for decades to come.

Link Freedom Group (LFG) aspires to become a best-in-class, vertically integrated domain name registration authority, see linkfreedomgroup.link. This TLD is part of a carefully curated portfolio of strings that LFG intends to pursue in ICANN’s 2026 New gTLD Program. In assembling this portfolio, LFG focused on securing meaningful, memorable, and commercially compelling strings that resonate strongly with end users and offer long-term growth potential. Over the past four years, LFG (Nova Registry) has successfully grown its flagship TLD, .LINK, from approximately 125,000 to more than 300,000 domains under management. This growth has been driven by innovative distribution strategies, the expansion of registrar partnerships, and a granular pricing model that has enabled .LINK to remain competitively priced while avoiding the significant fee increases implemented by some other registry operators. LFG’s experience in the domain name industry has reinforced one of the key lessons from the 2012 application round: long-term sustainability is strengthened through portfolio diversification. By spreading operational costs and mitigating revenue fluctuations across multiple TLDs, LFG is better positioned to withstand market volatility and invest in continued growth. Accordingly, LFG believes that even obtaining a subset of the TLDs for which it has applied will establish a diversified portfolio capable of supporting long-term economic stability, operational resilience, and sustainable growth.

Mission & Purpose Our mission is to democratize internet commerce by drawing a clear line between the individual artisan and the commercial seller to better represent the differences between the two. A brand is the vessel through which a creator’s truth about their work reaches the world by using a symbol, name, or other mark, used to communicate both subjective and objective information about a product or idea. A brand is not something that one merely embodies, but which allows a creator to bring something into existence; a symbol carrying the essence, soul, and honest purpose of what they’re offering to whomever may be listening. A brand’s meaning is entirely up to the observer to interpret regardless of its intention, communicating both feeling and fact, the promise and the data. Truth in marketing feels irrelevant; it’s the classic “Expectations vs. Reality.” Truth is subjective and requires people to agree on it together; however, reality exists independent of belief. Today, those who have the means can write their own history and ‘truth’ in a world where product reviews are synthetic. When truth doesn’t have to be earned, we are vulnerable to thieves, scammers, and liars. We envision that .BRAND will allow individual artisans, independent creators, and small businesses a home built on truth over time. Nowadays, .COM has come to represent commercial enterprise, mass production, and the pay-to-be-seen economics of late-stage internet capitalism. .BRAND gives creators a stable and verifiable foundation for their identity in a massive digital marketplace that is otherwise unsteady. A brand’s natural discovery and growth is gated behind having enough capital to spend on marketing firms who will get their product in front of their target audience while starving out individual artists. An ideal system would deliver success to those with the most merit, not just those with the monetized voice. When the loudest voice is the one with the deepest pockets, everyone should be given the freedom that both democracy and capitalism were meant to provide. Changing the paradigm is "democratizing e-commerce”: democracy as power returned to the individual rather than concentrated in legacy and capitalism. .BRAND can then democratize e-commerce and empower artists with .BRAND as a tool to revolutionize online shopping. .BRAND will be an arbiter and facilitator in the conversation between buyers and sellers and support all brands, whether new to the market or new to an individual, not simply the small independents and artisans, ultimately shifting focus off monetary gains and onto serving people. We envision .BRAND as a corner of the internet specifically for shopping that is curated, moderated, and intentionally designed. The gTLD will simplify the relationship between shoppers and brands and emphasize social benefit and serving people instead of accruing capital and corporate profits. We hope and dream that .BRAND will reward invention and reinvest in the artisans who build the community.

1. Mission and purpose: The mission of .brand is to provide a namespace for the practice and presentation of branding: the companies that build brands and the professionals who serve them. Intended registrants include businesses presenting brand portals, guidelines and asset libraries; branding, design and marketing agencies; brand-protection and licensing specialists; and consultants, educators and publishers in the discipline. Intended users are the customers, partners, creatives and marketers who interact with brands and branding services worldwide. Following delegation, the applicant will, as registry operator of the .brand TLD, conduct a phased launch, implement all ICANN-required rights protection mechanisms, and distribute the TLD through ICANN-accredited registrars, supported by marketing and outreach to build awareness and adoption among the intended registrant and user groups. The TLD will be operated under a comprehensive DNS abuse prevention and mitigation framework covering the full range of abuse types, combining proactive and reactive controls. Abuse reports will be investigated and actioned in line with applicable policy requirements. The objective is to maintain .brand as a high-quality, trusted namespace for registrants and end users. 2. Sustainability: Branding is a permanent commercial function: as long as businesses compete for attention and trust, they will invest in building, presenting and protecting brands, and a professional ecosystem will serve them. The vocabulary is global and stable.

1. Describe the mission and purpose of the applied-for gTLD. .brand helps branding agencies, design studios, and in-house identity teams create a clear and memorable online presence for the brand work they do, making it easier to be recognized as specialists and trusted by the clients they want to reach. It turns a web address into a signal of craft, framing a firm as identity-first. Intended Registrants: Branding and creative agencies, design studios, marketing consultancies, corporate brand teams, holding companies managing multiple brand portfolios, and individual brand strategists. Intended Users: Marketers, brand managers, agency clients, prospective customers researching a firm's work, and business audiences evaluating brand identity services or portfolios. Related Activities Supporting the Purpose: Activities that reinforce the purpose of the .brand namespace include: • Awareness-building among agencies, marketers, and brand-focused professionals • Registrar distribution through channels that reach creative and business services buyers • Registrant education on presenting portfolios and brand identity work through a clear web address • Community outreach to design, advertising, and marketing associations • Responsible registry operations consistent with standard practices A recognizable identity is the central asset that branding professionals build, protect, and grow, so a web address ending in .brand speaks directly to what this audience does. The namespace gives agencies, studios, and in-house teams a way to signal their focus the moment someone reads the address, before a page even loads. For a strategist launching an independent practice, a portfolio site on .brand frames the work as identity-first rather than generic marketing. For an agency, it offers a memorable place to showcase case studies, positioning work, and visual systems, helping prospective clients quickly understand what the firm specializes in. A .brand address also communicates what they are about: the discipline of shaping how companies, products, and campaigns are perceived. This clarity makes it easier for buyers of brand services to find the right partners, and easier for those partners to turn a name into a recognizable presence. Portfolio owners and holding groups can also use the namespace to organize showcase properties around a consistent, on-theme address that reinforces their expertise. 2. Explain how this purpose is sustainable over time. Branding endures because it sits inside a permanent competitive problem: whenever more than one provider offers a similar product or service, buyers need a way to tell them apart and decide whom to trust. Differentiation is not a passing trend but a structural feature of markets. As categories grow more crowded and choices multiply, the pressure to be distinctive intensifies rather than fades, which keeps demand for brand strategy, identity design, and positioning work steady. Branding is embedded in advertising agencies, design schools, marketing departments, professional associations, and industry awards that train practitioners and set standards generation after generation. This professional infrastructure gives the discipline continuity: careers, curricula, and firms are organized around building and managing identities, so the vocabulary and value of branding are continually renewed by new entrants to the field. Economic activity deepens this durability. A recognized identity carries measurable financial value, influencing pricing power, customer loyalty, and the worth assigned to companies when they are bought, sold, or invested in. Because a strong identity translates directly into commercial advantage, organizations of every size keep investing in the people who create and steward it. That investment sustains a continuous market for the agencies, studios, and strategists who make up the core of this namespace.

".BRAND" is proposed as an open namespace for anyone who has something to stand behind. That is a deliberately wide definition, and it needs to be. A regional restaurant building a local following, a Fortune 500 company managing a global identity, a nonprofit whose credibility depends on public recognition, and a solo creator who has spent years building an audience on someone else's platform all have the same underlying need: a place online that is theirs, that says what they stand for, and that does not disappear when an algorithm changes. Sports teams, entertainment franchises, athlete personal brands, franchise operators, and the agencies and consultants whose entire business is building identity for others all belong here for the same reason. ".BRAND" is for anyone who takes their identity seriously. Registration is open and non-exclusive; no industry, business model, or registrant type is privileged over another.

The mission of .BRAND is to provide a namespace associated with the concept of brand as the identity associated with a person, product, service, or entity. The .BRAND gTLD is intended to serve a broad range of registrants and users, including individuals, businesses, organizations, communities, projects, and other entities that identify with, relate to, or wish to be associated with the concept represented by the applied-for string. The purpose of .BRAND is to enable registrants to establish online identities using domain names that correspond to this concept. To achieve this purpose, Velvet Taupe, LLC will make .BRAND available for registration through registrars and other appropriate distribution channels; maintain a secure, stable, and reliable registry infrastructure; implement registration and operational policies that support the availability, security, and integrity of the namespace; and provide ongoing administration of the gTLD to enable registrants to register and use domain names within the namespace. The purpose of .BRAND is sustainable over time because brands are fundamental and enduring means by which people and entities establish and distinguish their identities. As society, technology, and methods of communication evolve, organizations and individuals will continue to establish online identities associated with the applied-for string.

The mission and purpose of the .brand gTLD is to help small businesses and independent entrepreneurs claim a credible brand identity online. Many small businesses struggle to be perceived as a brand: they compete for attention against much larger, established names, often operate under long or compromised domain names in crowded legacy namespaces, and lack the resources to build brand recognition. The word "brand" is highly descriptive of exactly this need. Important clarification. This application is for the OPEN, generic use of the descriptive word "brand". It is NOT an application for a .Brand TLD under Specification 13 of the Base Registry Agreement, and the TLD is not restricted to a single trademark owner. Registration is open to the public. The intended registrants are small and medium-sized businesses, startups, independent professionals, sole traders and emerging ventures that want a concise, memorable address foregrounding their identity — businesses for which appearing as a genuine, distinct brand is a real competitive need rather than a given. The intended users are the customers, partners and audiences of these businesses, who reach their stores, services and campaigns under .brand domains and read the address as a clear statement of brand identity. The TLD will be operated on an OPEN basis, with registration available to the general public through ICANN-accredited registrars on published terms applied on an equivalent basis to all registrars, consistent with the Registry Operator Code of Conduct (Specification 9). Related activities carried out to achieve this purpose include: (i) a robust launch program compliant with Specification 7, comprising a Sunrise period and a Trademark Claims period operated through the Trademark Clearinghouse to protect the rights of trademark holders — a priority given the trademark-adjacent nature of the string; (ii) a clear premium and reserved-name policy published before launch; (iii) distribution through accredited registrars, with a focus on channels that reach small businesses (website builders, hosting bundles, business-formation services); and (iv) accessible pricing suited to small businesses rather than speculators. Standard anti-abuse measures (the Mandatory Public Interest Commitments and the DNS Abuse provisions of Specification 11) apply to all registrations. The purpose is durable because building and asserting a brand is a permanent, universal need for businesses, entirely independent of any trend, and because new small businesses and ventures are created continuously worldwide — so the pool of relevant registrants is large, stable and constantly renewed. The use case is inherently renewal-driven: a business that establishes its identity and reputation on a .brand domain has strong, ongoing incentives to retain it year after year, since the domain becomes the anchor of the very brand legitimacy it was chosen to convey — supporting stable long-term renewal revenue rather than one-off or speculative registration. The applying entity, XRegistry Inc., is part of the Xserver group, a leading Japanese hosting provider whose infrastructure, distribution relationships and financial resources support long-term operation, and whose hosting and website-building ecosystem can improve retention by bundling .brand domains with the sites and stores that small businesses actually run. All Critical Functions (DNS, DNSSEC, EPP, RDDS, Data Escrow) are provided by Identity Digital, an established, ICANN pre-evaluated Registry Service Provider, ensuring operational continuity and compliance independently of registration volumes. Together, these factors ensure the namespace remains relevant, commercially viable and operationally stable for the full life of the TLD.

1. Mission and purpose. This gTLD will be operated as an open, unrestricted generic top-level domain. Its purpose is to expand naming choice in the DNS by making this term available at the top level for any lawful use chosen by the registrant. Registrations will be available to all registrants on a first-come, first-served basis through ICANN-accredited registrars, subject only to the Registry Agreement, ICANN Consensus Policies, and applicable law. The applicant will not operate this gTLD on an exclusive basis. 2. Intended registrants and users. Intended registrants are individuals, businesses, and other organizations worldwide seeking a short, meaningful domain name. There are no eligibility or name selection restrictions beyond those required by the Registry Agreement, ICANN Consensus Policies, and applicable law. Intended users are internet users worldwide who access domain names registered in this gTLD. 3. Related activities. The applicant is an established registry operator under contract with ICANN for 35 gTLDs, including .xyz. It has in place a qualified Registry Service Provider, distribution agreements with ICANN-accredited registrars across multiple regions, and all required rights protection mechanisms and DNS abuse mitigation practices. For this gTLD the applicant will onboard the TLD to its existing registry platform, conduct a Sunrise Period and Trademark Claims Period, launch General Availability through its registrar channel, and maintain ongoing registrar enablement, abuse monitoring, and compliance reporting. 4. Sustainability. Operation is funded by recurring registration and renewal revenue and does not depend on any single registrant, sector, or campaign. This gTLD will run on the applicant's existing shared registry infrastructure, so incremental operating cost is low and no minimum registration volume is required for viability. The applicant has operated gTLDs continuously since 2014.