If you are serious about your business, you have to trademark your company name. You absolutely won’t get really big otherwise. You may find out in the process that you can’t really trademark the name you were planning to use because someone else has trademarked it, and it’s certainly best to find that out earlier than later. However, if you chose your company name correctly based on good branding guidelines, you shouldn’t have a problem.
Using a trademark attorney is the best course when establishing a mark for your company name. You can do a lot of the initial legwork yourself though to save some of the cost, and if you are feeling adventurous you can even do the whole thing yourself. It’s actually not that difficult.
After choosing a good potential brand name, start by visiting the United States Patent and Trademark Office website. You can search on name you are considering and see if anyone else already owns that mark. The search may turn up results for that name, and potentially that is still ok. It depends what the business owner of the mark does and whether their business is related to your business. But most times, you want to avoid a mark that anyone else is laying claim to. This is where consulting with an experienced attorney pays off.
Additionally, you will want to do a Google search for the potential company name. If the search returns a lot of results, that’s probably not a good thing. Someone else may be using it for their business, and that can cause you problems down the line. Again, consulting with an attorney will be helpful. For sure if your Google search returns results for another company or product that is similar to the type of company that you are planning on, that’s a bad thing. You should move on and try another name.
The same goes for names of your products. If a Google search or USPTO search turns up an existing mark, you should probably steer clear.
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