The .toyota Dot Brand

Toyota Motor Corporation is a major motor vehicle production group comprised of 15 subsidiary companies and 50 manufacturing companies. Toyota was established in 1937, operates in more than 170 countries and has more than 317,000 employees.

Toyota's new brand TLD will help it communicate more easily and effectively with customers and stakeholders. The distinctive new .toyota extension will benefit Internet users (including employees, associates and affiliates) by providing new opportunities to interact online.

A strong Internet presence is central to Toyota's long term, sustainable business plan. The new domain space will help to develop this goal and attract potential new visitors. It will be used for navigational and promotional purposes to build the company's online presence and facilitate the provision of goods and services.

The TLD will become a supporting branding, technology and services platform for The Company's mission and its businesses.

Toyota will devote ample communications and outreach resources to achieve the projected benefits it envisions. The company will use the TLD in numerous marketing initiatives. Usage will be both specific and general:

For example, a user who first sees an advertisement for product.TOYOTA may later directly navigate to search.TOYOTA to search for other products of The Company.

The "Toyota" corporate brand is registered in around 170 countries or trademark jurisdictions. It serves as a clear reminder of the company's offerings. Toyota distinguishes two aspects of its valuable brand — it is both the brand of the flagship company and the representation of a motor vehicle line.

Marketing and communications will benefit from more effective brand recognition when the new string is launched. Brand awareness will grow.

Toyota's current traditional domain name portfolio is comprised of more than 300 names. All names in the .toyota TLD will initially be reserved for the company itself and carefully controlled. Revokable registration rights, with appropriate restrictions, may be extended to approved affiliates after a period of around three years has elapsed.

The Applicant provides a blueprint of the hierarchical structure it plans to use:

...the TLD will provide an easily navigable and predictable domain name space. For example, geographicnames.TOYOTA for locations of The Company's localized websites, function.TOYOTA for websites related to that company function, product.TOYOTA for websites related to that product.

Toyota will use its brand domains to enable the sharing of information with stakeholders. It will use leading-edge technologies to enhance its online infrastructure and encourage deeper interaction. The space will include websites, social media, email and other technologies. Ancillary services may also be provided such as hosting, marketing and consulting.

The sole registry status of the .toyota TLD will make it a trustworthy experience. Toyota will have much greater control over its domain space than before, which will result in greater security and authenticity. Overall, this will create an improved experience for all Internet users and assure the integrity of their interactions.

At time of application, Toyota envisions a relatively small number of brand domain registrations: "This TLD is projected to reach 300 domains at its peak volume...".

The Application notes that until now, it was often difficult to find and acquire a good, relevant domain name for a new website. The process could be expensive and complicated. Having an ample supply of available domains is likely to reap great dividends.

The .TOYOTA TLD will allow The Company to innovate and create many uses for domain names which today are too complicated, or are unforeseen.

Internet users will be able to more intuitively and quickly navigate to Toyota content. This will save time and likely reduce the need for using search engines. Confusion will be reduced.

Since there will be many other brand domains in the future, Toyota expects that consumers will quickly learn to distinguish this new class of domains from the existing set of traditional names. Users will also expect the brand TLDs to operate in consistent and predictable ways.

Brand domain owners will benefit collectively. Awareness and information will spread virally via their audiences and news & social media.

The branded nature of the TLD will serve as a differentiation force, as a distinctive name space that simplifies users' choice to interact with The Company...

Toyota will work closely with its back-end registry provider, ARI Registry Services, to prevent or minimise any undesirable activities in the new namespace that may have a negative impact on Internet users. Regulation will be robust. Toyota wants to provide a safe and legitimate online system that is a trustworthy indicator of the group's online presence. Toyota's reputation will be constantly reinforced and consumer confidence assured.

These safeguards include protection against illegal or illegitimate actions such as phishing, pharming, malware distribution, fast flux hosting, botnet command & control, fraud, email harvesting, defamation, spam, IP infringement, misuse of WhoIs data, hacking or other activities "with negative personal or economic consequences".

ARI will, owing to their extensive industry experience and established Anti-Abuse operations, implement and manage on our behalf various procedures and measures... This robust policy and procedure framework, which will be continually improved, updated and rigidly enforced, will preclude abusive registrations from being made.

The sole registry status of the .toyota string will provide a robust security foundation to prevent any online misuse of the space.

The primary safeguard against allowing for registrations in violation of eligibility restrictions is the technical incapability of those not authorised by the registry operator to register domain names in the TLD.

Toyota will continue its existing practices with respect to users' private and confidential information and will comply with laws and regulations concerning privacy and security.

Geographic Dot Brands

Toyota will initially reserve from registration geographic names in accordance with Specification 5 of the New gTLD Registry Agreement.

A comprehensive master list of country & territory names will be assembled. This list will be based on the ISO 3166-1 list, a UN Working Group list of standardized geographic names and a UN Group of Experts manual on standardized terms.

Toyota understands that if and when it wishes to obtain the release of a reserved identifier it will need to seek ICANN's approval. It has developed a special release mechanism with this aim in mind.

The Applicant proposes to provide the GAC with the prior option of rejecting a geographical domain name that it wishes to register. However, since any such domains would be used responsibly to represent the Toyota brand name, the company believes it would be "almost impossible to anticipate any abuse or misconduct" and that the GAC would be highly unlikely to have any reason to object.

Generally, it is extremely unlikely that The Company's authorized use of any countryname.TOYOTA or cc.TOYOTA domain name could be confusing to users, or otherwise offensive to any country.

NOTE: cc = country code

In any situation, Toyota expresses a strong desire to respect the sensitivity and sovereignty of governments with regard to the use of their national names.

Possible .toyota Brand Domains

Car.toyota
Truck.toyota
Home.toyota
Parts.toyota
Service.toyota
Technology.toyota
Camry.toyota
Prius.toyota
FT-1.toyota
Hybrid.toyota
Dealers.toyota
SafetyConnect.toyota
Manuals.toyota
FuelCell.toyota
Concept.toyota
Search.toyota (specifically mentioned in the application)

Notes

Brand names mentioned on this site are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective corporations. This site claims no association with or endorsement by any of these corporations and their marks are mentioned only to illustrate opinion presented in the public interest.

All quotations on this page are from the respective companies' official ICANN brand TLD applications unless otherwise stated.

Many possible theoretical dot brands are mentioned (in English). There are also countless possibilities in other languages. This has significant potential value for international navigation.

This site is focused on reporting the strategic impact of the brand domains on internet communication, competition and commerce, and some comment is speculative.

It is not a comprehensive overview of what some of the world's largest corporations have chosen to reveal about their plans for the implementation of their proprietary domain strings.

ICANN is particularly concerned with the technical, financial, security and legal issues associated with the new TLDs. These issues are beyond the scope of this website.

For a comprehensive overview of the brand domains and their impact on the web, refer to ICANN's website and the individual applications (large parts of which are publicly published).

If you have a particular interest in an individual company, the public aspects of their applications are available for download via these ICANN links: You can also search a complete list of applicants there.

ICANN new gTLD applications

ICANN official website

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