Declaring what you already own
Tell Brand Protect which assets are yours, and the score reflects your hold instead of raw availability.
Erik Kostelnik
Last Update 3 months ago
If you already hold a domain, handle, or trademark, tell Brand Protect. It changes what your score means.
By default, a screening score measures availability — how much of the namespace is open for you to take. A taken .com counts against a name because you can't have it.
But if the .com is taken by you, that's the opposite of a problem. Once you declare it, the score reflects your actual hold on the name rather than raw availability. A trademark you own reads very differently from the same mark held by a competitor.
What to declare:
What happens after: declared assets stop counting as conflicts and start counting as holdings. And when something you own changes — a domain approaching expiry, a handle that's gone inactive — that becomes an alert about your own position rather than someone else's.
Unconfirmed handles score worse than confirmed ones. If a handle matching your name exists and you haven't said whether it's yours, we have to treat it as a possible conflict.
By default, a screening score measures availability — how much of the namespace is open for you to take. A taken .com counts against a name because you can't have it.
But if the .com is taken by you, that's the opposite of a problem. Once you declare it, the score reflects your actual hold on the name rather than raw availability. A trademark you own reads very differently from the same mark held by a competitor.
What to declare:
- Domains you've registered
- Social handles you control
- Trademarks filed in your name
- Business entities you've registered
What happens after: declared assets stop counting as conflicts and start counting as holdings. And when something you own changes — a domain approaching expiry, a handle that's gone inactive — that becomes an alert about your own position rather than someone else's.
Unconfirmed handles score worse than confirmed ones. If a handle matching your name exists and you haven't said whether it's yours, we have to treat it as a possible conflict.