Protecting Your Business Name

In many businesses, the corporate name is one of the most important corporate assets. This is especially true where you place a lot of marketing resources to build a name identity for your products or services. The importance of protecting your business name is even more important with online businesses who have a national or even an international exposure.

Securing a corporate name and a fictitious name do not, in and of themselves, provide you with proprietary protection. Just the fact that you have secured a corporate name within your state does not give you rightis to foreclose others from using the name to market their goods and services to customers in your state.

In order to protect your business name, you need to comply with state and federal trademark laws. Generally, trademark rights in a name arise upon first use in commerce. In order to obtain federal trademark protection, the use of your name must be in "interstate commerce."

In order to assure that you have the ammunition to protect your name and to have a third party cease and desist from a competing use of your name, you should secure state and federal trademark protection for your name.

Our Small Business E-Book includes forms and instructions for obtaining trademark protection under your state's laws. We also offer upgraded Federal Trademark Registration E-Books that are available for download through our sister site, www.weblawresources.com.

We also suggest that prior to filing your registration that you perform a comprehensive common law trademark search to be certain that the name that you wish to trademark is not being used by another party. Failure to perform such a search prior to filing a registration can lead to dire consequences. For example, if another party has rights to the name at issue, your filing a registration covering that name could actually be evidence of your infringement on the rights of the party who has superior right to the name.

To obtain a comprehensive common law trademark search, click on the "Trademark Search" icon on the right column of this page.