3 Tips to Choose a Strong Business Name

Your business name helps your business stand out and influences how your clients find you. Choosing a strong business name from the start ensures your business is unique, recognizable, and legally protected. Tune in for 3 tips to choose a business name that won't get you in trouble, won't be copied, and helps your business grow.

If you love your business name and want to make sure it stays protected, it may be time to think about registering you trademark. Go to artfulcontracts.com/trademarks to learn more and book your trademark consultation.

Key Takeaways

• A business or product name that merely describes what you do or the product you're selling will receive a lower level of trademark protection. Made-up or random names receive the highest level of protection.
• You can use the same name as someone else as long as you are selling different things - think Dove for chocolate and Dove for soaps.
• Always search your business name on Google and using the Trademark Electronic Search System. But remember, TESS only gives you super similar results so it's best to also have a lawyer conduct a search for you.

Resources Mentioned

• Learn more about trademark registration services
  
• Check out USPTO's trademark electronic search system
• Watch the free masterclass 
• Follow Amy on Instagram @artfulcontracts

Next Steps

Thank you so much for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please reach out and let me know by sending me a DM on Instagram @artfulcontracts

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Episode Transcript

Your business name is integral to your marketing and therefore the success of your business. When someone recommends you, the first thing out of their mouth is probably your business name. It's important for the growth of your business, but it's also important from a legal perspective that you choose a strong business name that isn't going to get you in trouble and that is going to keep your business unique and recognizable and that no one else can copy.So today we are talking about three tips to choose a strong business name.

Hey, I'm Amy Nesheim, licensed attorney for online business owners and founder of my own business, Artful Contracts. You're listening to Legal Made Easy, the show that makes the legal aspects of online business easy to understand and implement so you can grow your business with confidence knowing you've got it all covered. Let's dive in.

These tips are kind of intertwined, and you might, when you're going through the process to choose, you'll have to think about, you know, one of them and then bounce back to the other. So I'm gonna give you all three tips and then we'll dive into them in more detail. Alright, here we go. First, choose a name that is unique and recognizable. Second, choose a name that is legally available to register as your business name. And third, choose a name that isn't already trademarked by someone else.

Now you might think those second and third ones are the same, but they're not. So keep listening. And if you've already chosen your business name, you might be tempted to skip over this episode, but I encourage you to listen anyways and evaluate how strong is your business name. Is this something that is going to stick with you and work for you as your business grows?

One other caveat I want to throw in here is that I see a lot of new business owners who get hung up on this stage of the process. They want to choose the perfect name because they think that that will somehow magically bring them clients or make their business super successful. This is a procrastination tactic. You are probably scared. Yes, it is legitimate. Like, yes, your business name is important, but don't let it hold you back from starting your business because you can always change it.

If you need to start your business as your last name and your service or just your name, totally fine. And that actually works for some people throughout their entire business. So if you want to just use your name, that absolutely works. But if you have an attachment to the idea of having a business name that is not just your name or that is unique in some way, then follow these tips. And you know what? Even if you're using your name, that might not be legally available. And we're gonna talk about that. So keep listening, but don't let this hold you back.

Alright, let's go through those tips. First, choose a name that is unique and recognizable. And I want to add in here, easy to remember. This is obviously a marketing thing, right? You want people to be able to recommend you, you want people to remember your name so that they can find you again. So there's kind of two schools of thought on this.

First, you can choose something that describes what you do and is related to what you do because that'll probably be easy to remember. And it's really clear to somebody who you are and what you offer if your name describes what you do. So that might be something like Smith copywriting, or actually, my web designer is a great example, Karima Creative. So it's her first name, and then creative indicates you know she's a creative professional of some kind, she's a designer, and that works really well.

On the other side of this, you could choose something that is totally unrelated to what you do, or is totally a random word. And the reason for that is that it gives you stronger trademark protection when your name is really unique or it's a made-up name. So think of like Google, Kodak, basically every prescription drug name that you can think of. Xanax, Zoloft, Zertec. I don't know why they all start with Z, but they're basically two syllables, made up word that's you know kind of easy to remember, but obviously not taken by anyone else because they're made up, right?

Those who have the strongest trademark protection, so that's a good reason to go that way. Uh, you can also do something that's kind of unrelated to what you do, like Apple. It's not a made-up word, but it's a technology company, has nothing to do with apples, and that makes it a strong trademark. If you have a more unique name, you might not need to go that route, but if you have a super common name, that might be important if you want that recognizability and trademark protection.

I want to caution you against using something that is hard to spell for SEO reasons, and so that includes like fun, unique spellings of things. Unless Google is gonna be able to figure it out, maybe avoid that. Now I hear some of you saying, Well, my last name is absolutely impossible to spell, but I really want to use my name as my business name. You can totally do it.

So the example I'm thinking of is Mike McAllowitz, he's the author of Profit First and a whole bunch of other books. He when he speaks and he's telling someone to go to his website, he created a redirect. So he says, type in micmotorbike.com so that you don't have to spell McAllowitz, and he has a redirect that goes to his main website. So you can totally do it, but it's a matter of making, even if you have something that's hard to spell, making it easily accessible to people so that they can still type it in and find you. They have something to type in.

And here's why this is so important: you want people to be able to find you, you want people to remember you, and you also want to make sure that you're not going to be confused with someone else. So, an easy example, imagine you are having a conversation with someone, and you say, Oh, I have an appointment with Dr. Smith next week. And they say, Oh, are you going to see Dr. Smith the chiropractor or Dr. Smith the psychiatrist or Dr. Smith the dentist? You don't want that conversation to happen about your business, right?

You don't want people to be confused as to who is being talked about in a conversation. And you want people to be able to take that conversation and then go type the name they heard into Google and be able to find it. On the other end of it, that same thing also goes for unique names. You can't be, you don't want to be so out there that it's impossible to remember or that it's confusing.

Um, there's all these skits in like sitcoms about this type of confusion. So, you know, somebody says, Oh, let's go to that coffee shop, and then the other person says, Oh, do you mean the one on Main Street? No, I mean that coffee shop, and this goes on forever, and that actually turns out that the name of the coffee shop is that coffee shop. It's funny on TV, but it's not practical in terms of business, right?

So choosing a name that is unique, won't be confusing to consumers, is recognizable, is easy to type in, and isn't just a generic description of what you do. It's better for marketing, but it also gives you stronger trademark protection because the more someone associates your business name specifically with your business, the stronger your trademark protection can be.

The second tip is to choose a name that's legally available to register as your business name. So what I'm talking about here is it's not already used by someone else as an LLC name or as a trade name in your state. This is different than trademarks, and I'm gonna address trademarks in a minute with the third tip. This is specifically about business registration.

So taking that first tip, create a list of names that you like, or you know, choose your top three, and then go make sure that it is available to register as an LLC or as a trade name. If you're not ready to register your LLC yet, that's okay. But if you're using a business name that's different from your legal name, you have to register it as a trade name, also called a DBA or fictitious name or assumed name, which and it's basically just an official nickname for your business.

And it gives people a way, if they see your business name, if they know your business name, but they don't necessarily know your legal name, it gives them a way to look your business name up and attach it to the legal person behind the name. So it's an official registered nickname for your business. That means when you're choosing a name, it has to be available to be registered either as a trade name or as if you are ready to form an LLC, the LLC name has to be available.

So only one business in every state can have the same name. And that makes sense, right? How confusing would it be if there were two LLCs down the street from each other with the same name? Not good, right? So the way you look this up is you type into Google business name search and your state, and you skip past all the ads because there are lots of services that will do this for you for a fee, but you can probably do it for free on your state gov state government website.

So scroll past the ads, find the.gov site, and it's usually going to be the Secretary of State or the Department of State that runs this website, and they will have a free or very low-cost search tool where you can type in your business name and it will tell you if there is a trade name or an LLC already registered.

And if there is, that means you can't use that name as your LLC or trade name. That does not mean that that name is trademarked, it just means you won't be able to register your LLC or trade name using that same name.

All right, let me expand on that a little bit. So the name might already be taken, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can't use it. So with LLCs, you are able to register something generic as your LLC name, like your first and last name, comma LLC, and then still use something else as your business name. If you wanted to do that, you would have to register a trade name. So it is important that the trade name is available.

But there may be a situation where someone has the LLC registered, but either they're not using the LLC, they're not active as a business, or they have the LLC name, but they're using something else as their front-facing business name, their public business name. Or their LLC, the services that they provide are so unrelated to yours that it wouldn't be confusing or conflict a conflict. The trade name still has to be available, but you could potentially register, you know, first and last name LLC, and then register that business name that you like as a trade name if that other business hadn't used it already.

The third tip is to choose a name that isn't already trademarked by someone else. Now I know there is some confusion around the difference between an LLC name and a trademark, so I want to hone in on that a little bit. When you file your LLC or when you file your trade name or DBA, that does not give you trademark protection in that name. All it does is register your business with your state. And LLC names and trade names are also state specific.

So that means that somebody in the next state over can register the exact same LLC name. And as online business owners, that's that doesn't help us, right? We could we could be in competition with that same person who registered the same LLC name in one state over. So that's where trademark protection comes in. Trademarks, when they're registered with the USPTO, provide protection across the entire US. So it doesn't matter, you know, what your LLC name is, it doesn't matter what state it's registered in, trademark protection is totally separate.

The other thing to remember is that trademarks can be registered for things that are not a business name. When you're doing the LLC search, all that's coming up are business names. Trademarks can apply to anything that helps a customer recognize a brand. So that includes a slogan, just do it is a trademark of Nike, right? So you could probably file for just do it LLC, but you could not use just do it as your business name if you were selling sports goods or probably even if you were a personal trainer because it's a trademark of Nike. It's not their business name, but it is their registered trademark.

So that means after you've chosen a few names, after you found out that they are legally available to register as an LLC or as a trade name, then you also need to search the trademark database and make sure that you're not using something that is trademarked by someone else in your same niche service area. So the way that you do that is you can type into Google trademark electronic search system and again skip past any ads that tell you that you can pay for a trademark search and find the USPTO's link to TESS. It's the acronym, T-E-S-S. It's again, it's a.gov site, and that is a free search tool provided by the USPTO, and you can type in your business name and it will tell you if there are any registered trademarks for that name.

Now make sure you do not include the LLC when you're typing it in. And also make sure you do variations on the name because the test search system is fairly limited unless you know how to do Boolean searches. It will come up with identical results and it will come up with some related results, but not everything. It's not super comprehensive unless you type in like a million variations on what you're trying to do. Because trademark protection isn't just for identical things, it's also for things that are confusingly similar. So that can mean that, you know, out of a three-word phrase, one of the words is different, that might still be too confusing.

And my favorite example to use with demonstrating the limitations of tests, if you type in Starbucks, obviously you're gonna get a million results, right? If you type in Starbucks with two S's at the end, it says that no results were found. Clearly, you cannot use Starbucks with two S's at the end as a trademark. That would be too similar and confusing and violate Starbucks trademark. But it is a good place to start to make sure that you know your exact phrase, your exact business name isn't already registered as a trademark.

And you know, you can type in some variations as well. If you want to be super thorough, you can have a lawyer do a full trademark search for you. This is a service that I offer, and lawyers have access to much better software that combs the USPTO database in a much more thorough way. And it's also helpful if you do find a result that comes back that's the same, evaluating, you know, how similar is too similar, and also evaluating whether there's actually a conflict because trademarks only apply in the category of goods or services that you provide.

So that's the kind of thing that a lawyer is really helpful for to evaluate, you know, is this too close? Is this actually a conflict? So there you have it. That is the three tips to choose a strong business name. You might have to go back through, start with, you know, brainstorming some ideas that are unique, recognizable, easy to remember, easy to type, and then check if they are available to register as your LLC or trade name, and also if they are already trademarked by someone else. And going through that, you might have to go back, you know, you find out that the LLC name isn't available, go back to the drawing board. And this is gonna be, you know, kind of an iterative process. If you love your business name and you want to make sure that no one else can copy it, no one else can use it, then it may be time to think about trademark registration for your business name.

I would love to talk to you about how strong your business name is, whether your trademark is available, and get started on that registration process. Go ahead and go to artfulcontracts.com/ trademarks and book your consultation call with me to get that process started. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next week.