When Choosing a Business Name Also Perform a Trademark Search!

Hello!

When choosing to go into business, there are several imperative tasks you must accomplish to ensure you are legally compliant. They are:

1. legally organize your business with the Secretary of State's Office;
2. obtain a valid business license;
3. obtain a federal employee identification number and if needed a sales tax number;
4. claim and obtain a trade name (if needed);
5. claim and apply for a trademark

However, most new business owners never consider claiming and applying for a trademark until it becomes a necessity or someone else asserts claim to their trademark. For this very reason, I advise my client to:

1. do a preliminary search to ensure that a trademark right has not been claimed in the company's business name;
2. after a trademark search has been completed, and the business name appears free from trademark claims, immediately apply for state and federal trademarks.

In my legal opinion, it is imperative to perform a trademark search as soon as you choose a company name. Why? If you choose a name that already has priority trademark rights, and you have spent considerable funds establishing and growing the business, you may have to change your name. Ouch! In addition, if no trademark rights have been asserted in your company name, you would want to claim ownership of the trademark. Very often people tend to infringe on company and or trademark names if they see the potential in its success! Remember, the first to use the name in commerce is the priority trademark owner!

A preliminary search on Google will cost you $0. However, to ensure you are not infringing another trademark owner's rights, a more comprehensive search can be done for $550. In my opinion, $550 is a small price to pay for a piece of mind.

I welcome your thoughts!