You’ve chosen the perfect business name and you’re excited about starting to use it. Great! But not so fast. Before you spend time and money marketing under that business name, you need to make sure it is legally a great name, one you can feel confident in using without running into an unexpected cease and desist request or trademark infringement litigation and the potential catastrophe of forced rebranding on a short time scale.
How can you do that? You also need a full search of:
- the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)’s trademark database,
- the internet,
- all searchable state trademark and business registration databases,
- social media handles and pages, and
- commercial business indexes.
Searching for exact matches isn’t enough either. You need also to search for:
- names that sound similar,
- names identical in meaning, and
- names that look similar.
Why? Names similar in look, sound, or meaning can create confusion among consumers and won’t be allowed to register as trademarks. They can also result in cease and desist requests from the owners of the businesses with the similar names.
King Business and Patent Law, PLLC helps clients make sure the names they’ve chosen for their businesses are truly available for use. If our comprehensive searching finds problematic results, we advise clients about coming up with alternative names more likely to be truly available. Then we work with clients to register their good name with the USPTO as a trademark and keep an eye out for new businesses who may be trying to use an identical or similar name and stop them.
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