Buying a name?

[Blink-Brian]

Hello Everyone,

How possible is it to be able to buy a name for instance... if your company was named "hello - something" and you wanted to ensure you could buy everything single "hello - someelse" "hello - another" "hello - anything" ect

How would one go about this??

 

[MrMichael]

You can use a trade name and develop goodwill in that name, this will allow you to take action against people who might wish to trade on your goodwill.

You can go a step further, and register your tradename but you must actually use the name (although if you want you could register any similar company names and domains and keep them dormant), you can't reserve trade names just in case someone else wants to use it.

Holding a trade mark for your business name will allow you to stop people using confusingly similar names.

 

[Rickytaylor]

Hi Michael, Thanks for the info.

 

[The Legal Mango Team]

In addition, it's not uncommon for businesses to set up limited companies with the names of their products / brands to reduce the risk of new companies with the same or similar names being incorporated. However, you'll need to bear in mind the increased administration costs & time associated with making all of the necessary filings etc.

You could also buy the domain names which reflect your products / brands.

With both of the above tactics, you'll need to be careful that you don't inadvertently infringe the rights of another business though.

The above would be used as part of a wider brand protection strategy, which would start with the things detailed in Mr Michael's post.

Worth speaking to an intellectual property expert to discuss the options in detail.

Hope this helps.

We're not a firm of solicitors and the above is intended as general guidance.

 

[VeryMark]

Trade mark registration is the only sure form of protection - our website has a number of free factsheets in this area.