{
  "id": "BRD-013",
  "slug": "brd-013",
  "title": "A brand must be a business, not a person",
  "statement": "Outside the sole-proprietor tier, the registered brand must be a business entity rather than an individual's personal identity.",
  "rationale": "A2P messaging is registered to businesses because the whole accountability chain — the tax record, the vetting report, the complaint route — hangs off a business existing. An individual registering under their own name outside the sole-proprietor tier has no such record, so nothing can be verified and the brand is refused. It happens honestly: consultants, coaches and creators genuinely trade as themselves, and the standard tier is the one the form defaults to.",
  "layer": "BRAND",
  "layerSlug": "brand",
  "object": "brand.company_name + brand.entity_type",
  "severity": "BLOCKING",
  "detectability": [
    "AI_FORM"
  ],
  "failureClass": "RETRY_FIELD",
  "authorities": [
    "Twilio"
  ],
  "codes": [
    {
      "provider": "Twilio",
      "code": "30928",
      "remediable": true
    }
  ],
  "applicability": {
    "excludeEntityTypes": [
      "SOLE_PROPRIETOR"
    ]
  },
  "applicabilityText": "Applies when the brand is NOT a sole proprietor.",
  "universal": false,
  "remediation": "If the business is a registered entity, use its registered name and EIN. If it genuinely is you trading as yourself, switch to the sole-proprietor tier, which verifies by mobile OTP instead of by tax record and expects exactly a personal name. Done when the entity type and the name agree about what is being registered.",
  "example": "company_name: Acme Coffee Co, LLC on the standard tier — or \"Jane Doe\" on the sole-proprietor tier, never a person's name on the standard one",
  "pitfalls": [
    "Adding \"Consulting\" to your own name does not create an entity. If there is no registration behind the words, the standard tier still has nothing to verify."
  ],
  "notes": "The inverse of BRD-068, which requires a personal name on the sole-proprietor tier. The two are tagged to opposite sides of the same dimension so exactly one fires per registration.",
  "phase": "approval",
  "automated": true,
  "url": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-013/",
  "markdown": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-013.md",
  "registry": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/",
  "updated": "2026-07-25",
  "licence": "CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}