What are the Legal Aspects for Business Names?

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How one chooses to name a company can have profound effects on its marketing and branding strategies. It's one of the first and most important decisions a business owner will have to deal with. While you do still want your name to sound great, there are still some legal requirements that you have to deal with. To make life easier for you, we have highlighted what some of the main legal aspects are.

Trademarking

Federal trademarking laws can limit naming options for you. A trademark is a label that identifies a product, business or a service. For a business a trademark is intellectual property. When something has a trademark, any name that infringes on that name cannot be used.

So while you're creating a name for your business, it's important firstly to check that the name is available, and not trademarked, because if you do end up using that name you could end up in some trouble. You can use a federal government website to do a trademark search of your proposed business name to check. It will let you know if you're breaking any laws by infringement of someone else's property, and help you keep away from potential future lawsuits.

And if you find your name is available and not trademarked, it may actually be useful to trademark it for yourself. Often when people start a business they don't plan for how big it could get, and you could end up with competitors and rivals trying to copy you. If you trademark your name you can claim more of what you're doing, and make yourself important.

Copyrights

Another way federal law can provide a layer of restriction on company names is in the form of copyright protection. Copyright law protects the expression of an idea. This means that new companies can't use such expressions in the names of their businesses. One such example of this would be a copyrighted slogan, like the one Coca Cola has, or Skittles. So it's important to make sure that any words you are using aren't copyrighted, and if you have something you'd like to copyright, do it.

State registration

This is an extremely important one. A company must register its name in every single state that the business is operating in. The state in which the business was started is the 'home' state, or the state of incorporation, of the company. The company has to choose a name that's not already registered in the home state. So the key thing is that in the state in which you form your business, the name needs to not be taken in that state only. It can be used in another state - what depends in the state your business is located in.

Following rules for your business structure

All too often many people decide on a name after much consideration, but then realise that the name does not completely meet the requirements of the business structure that they have decided to choose. For instance, if you decide to create an LLC after picking out a name, you may soon realise that in most states you're required to actually have the words 'limited liability company' or some sort of abbreviation of this, or that you've used a word you're not allowed to, which can result in you having to start straight from square one.

That's why it's very important to check the requirements for your specific business structure, because not all of them have the exact same requirements, and you don't want to get into trouble for a silly little thing like that.

When you've read this information and are thinking of forming a name, you may be at a loss. If you ever feel like you are so, there are many business name generators out there to help start you off with the invention of a name. TRUiC a brand name generator as such. Visit their site for more.