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When you lot own a small concern, your name is everything. It'due south on your website, signs, and marketing materials. It's how customers notice and retrieve you. When some other business uses a proper noun that'due south a lot similar yours, customers can get confused. And that's bad for your business.

When you own a minor business, your name is everything. It'south on your website, signs, and marketing materials. It'due south how customers find and call up you. When another business uses a proper name that's a lot like yours, customers can get confused. And that's bad for your business.

To make sure your name is yours alone, it'southward important to exist proactive. If you've formed a corporation or an LLC, you have some protections against other companies in your country having the same name. But for brand protection, you may want to register your proper noun as a federal trademark.

Name Protection Provided Past Business Entity Registration

When you lot ready your corporation, LLC, or other business entity, you had to choose a name that was "available" in your state, pregnant that it wasn't already being used by another business organization entity. The requirements for name availability vary from state to country, but, in general, states don't allow two concern entities with the same, or about the same, name. This means that in one case you accept formed your business, your land won't allow another company to exist formed with the same name.

However, there are limits to the proper noun protection offered by business organization entity registration. Your state's business organization formation laws probably will not protect you lot confronting some other concern that uses a similar, merely not identical, name that confuses your customers. For example, if yous own "In the Clouds Footwear, Inc.," your land may deem information technology acceptable for a competitor to grade a business called "Cloudz Footwear, Inc."

In many states, concern formation laws practice not regulate "doing business as" or "dba" names used by sole proprietors, partnerships, or even corporations and LLCs. Thus, your business registration may not stop another entrepreneur from doing business organization under a name that's like or even the same as yours.

Using your name in concern may requite you some trademark protection within your locality. Yous may exist able to employ these "common constabulary" trademark rights to cease a competitor from using your name locally. But state business concern entity registration does non in itself offer any trademark protection, nor does it prevent an identically-named business from setting up shop in a neighboring land.

Register a Trademark for Comprehensive Brand Protection

Federal trademark registration is a more involved process than state entity registration, and is used to protect your make name nationwide. It paves the way for foreign trademark registrations, allows you lot to register your mark with U.South. Community and Edge Protection to block imports of infringing appurtenances, and gives you the right to sue for trademark infringement in federal court. Federal registration also creates a public record of your trademark ownership, which tin can make it easier to prove infringement and deter others from using a name like to yours.

A registered trademark doesn't just protect you against a business that uses your exact same brand name. It also gives you lot rights against whatsoever business anywhere in the country that uses a make name that is similar and might misfile customers. Under trademark police, names are "confusingly similar" if they await or sound similar and they are used on related types of products or services.

For example, customers might be confused and retrieve that "Clouds Footwear" and "Cloudz Shoes" were fabricated by the same company. Simply they probably would not be confused by "Clouds Skydiving School," since skydiving instruction and shoes are not typically sold together.

Federal trademark registration is typically more expensive than forming a business concern entity, the process takes longer, and the United States Patent and Trademark Role (USPTO) will carefully evaluate your awarding before deciding whether to register your trademark. The USPTO will not register your trademark if it is confusingly similar to an existing marker or awaiting trademark application, so information technology is of import to practice your ain trademark search before filing a trademark application.

Business entity registration may be all y'all need if yous accept a local, brick-and-mortar business and you don't programme to expand or offer products or services online. Merely, if you lot volition be doing business across state lines or actively promoting yourself on the internet—or if yous merely worry about copycat competitors—you may want to also consider trademark registration.