As more organisations explore owning their branded top-level domain or their .brand (for example .safenames), it’s important to understand that taking on your exclusive corner of the internet isn’t just a technical or regulatory step – it means becoming fully responsible for a critical piece of internet infrastructure.
It’s also vital to bring senior stakeholders from across your organisation on the journey with you, before making a final decision on whether to apply.
In this vodcast, Safenames CEO Adan McManus and Senior Legal Adviser James Taylor are joined by ICANN’s Bob Ochieng and Lars Hoffman to discuss what it truly means to operate a .brand. From what it takes to run a registry and the rules around trademark ownership, including Specification 13, to the bigger question: how your IT, security, legal and marketing teams align to make it work.
Whether you’re exploring the opportunity or already preparing for the application window between April 30 and August 12 this year, this session will help you understand what’s at stake, where to focus, and how to build a strong foundation to move your .brand forward.
Full transcript below:
Adan McManus: Hi there. We're here on cam for the next ten minutes or so to explore some of the internal conversations that will help you decide whether owning a .brand is right for your organisation, and how to secure buy-in from key internal stakeholders.
My name is Adan McManus, I'm the CEO of safenames. I'm joined by James Taylor, a Senior Legal Adviser here at safenames. We also have Bob Ochieng, Senior Director of the New gTLD Program at ICANN, and Lars Hoffman, Deputy Lead for the 2026 Program.
Bob and Lars, if you're happy to start by outlining the responsibilities that sit with a brand owner and why it's vital to own a trademark to be able to apply for and own your brand, that would be very helpful.
Bob Ochieng: Applying for a top-level name means you are applying to become a registry operator. So when you apply for that top-level name, at ICANN, we call you a registry operator. Any entity, as already indicated, that operates a top-level name for us is a registry operator.
And that comes with a lot of responsibility. You are literally operating a piece of critical internet infrastructure. That comes with huge responsibility, and therefore, there are specific agreements that such an entity would then sign with ICANN.
Adan McManus: Lars, would you mind taking us through the rules around owning a .brand and what Spec 13 means for organisations wishing to apply? Also, are there any restrictions if your brand name is a generic term shared by others, like "United," for example?
Lars Hoffman: So yeah, Spec 13 is Specification 13, which is a specification that is added to the Registry Agreement that a registry signs with ICANN. This is actually the contract between the two for a TLD to go public. Spec 13 is kind of a template. You can look at the wording already in the Applicant Guidebook, and also the existing Spec 13 for brands that are already in the Domain Name System—at the root, as we say.
The ability, if you have a Spec 13—I spoke about that just a second ago as well—is that you can, as a brand, limit or restrict the registrations within your TLD to only the registry operator. As an example, you could say that as a car brand, only you as the company, and then maybe licenced dealerships, would be able to register their domain here.
The addition is also that the string itself is essentially a registered trademark that it matches. So you couldn't say that you use a generic term to operate that as a .brand. The string itself clearly has to match the trademark that you hold.
Now, you can imagine there are brands that are actually generic words, obviously. Those can still apply for a TLD because they hold a trademark for that term. But a brand, for example—I used earlier the example of United Airlines, the aeronautical company. You can see a situation where any brand that operates planes would like to use ".plane" as their TLD. That would not be possible, right? Unless your actual brand is named "Plane."
The modifications here go, as I said, into the Registry Agreement and become a contractual obligation between ICANN and the registry. If you wanted to change that and remove the Spec 13 from the TLD, there are possibilities that would allow for that. But that kind of goes beyond the applicant. In the new programme, those are then standard contractual negotiations between the applicant (or the registry operator at that moment) and ICANN.
James Taylor: Thank you very much, Bob, and Lars, for talking us through what it means to be a brand registry operator and for clarifying the Spec 13 trademark rules. Can you now tell us from your perspective what IT security, legal, and marketing teams should be aligning on before deciding whether to apply for a .brand?
Bob Ochieng: So as a brand particularly, I think first of all, you want to look at what is really the use case that you want to put to this particular name, depending on whatever brand you have. I think the other way of asking the same question is, what is the opportunity cost of applying vis-a-vis not applying? What do we lose if we don't apply?
And if the pros outweigh the cons, then it actually makes sense to apply. Because, you know, why would you apply for a .brand? It's really from a brand protection perspective, meaning that it would make much more sense for your brand to also be a digital identity. But it might also make much more sense if you protect your brand from encroachment from any other potential applicant.
So what would be the cost of not applying is the other way to ask the same question, and to have to make a decision. Because we have scenarios of names or brands that have been applied for and just kept so that they are not available for any encroachment whatsoever. So I think that's an important consideration.
I think the industry matters. You could be a big brand, but because of your type of industry, it makes sense to have your brand as a digital identity, or it doesn't. So I guess the industry matters, but I think the real motivation should be data and security. Are you very keen on security? Would you really want your brand to be global in terms of reach and access, and hence your digital identity as well?
But if you don't want it to be represented as a TLD, then have you taken the necessary steps to protect it against any potential threat of someone else applying for it? Because either way, if it is not protected, then someone else can actually take advantage of it. So you either apply for it or protect it in a different way.
Adan McManus: On behalf of Safenames, thank you very much for your time, Bob and Lars. These have been very enlightening insights.
If you're watching and you would like to talk more about applying for your .brand, our experienced team is here to walk you through the process and help you make your business case. Or take a look at our other ICANN Vodcast where Bob and Lars walk us through the brand application window and full application journey process. They also give us their views on what makes a brand ready to apply, along with common misunderstandings and delays in the application process.
Bye for now.
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