How do I go about protecting my company's name?

[Fluffernutter]

How do I go about protecting my company's name so that nobody else can start up their own business in the city I live in and call themselves the same name? The first word of my company's name is the city I live in then the service I offer.

I had a look online but there seems to be different options from a basic, privacy, comprehensive and ultimate and I don't understand what all that means. I don't need anything with fancy extras like a 'virtual office system' like one was offering or 'credit reports' - I just want to prevent someone from using the same name.

Any advice please? Thanks.

 

[fisicx]

You can try and trademark the name but that won’t stop anyone launching a business with something similar. You would then have to take legal action to get them to stop. And you might win but you might not. And you might not even get a trademark granted.

In short: there isn’t a lot you can do if the name is so generic.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Why do you feel you at risk of being plagiarised? Name theft ' is pretty uncommon in small business - where it does happen it's usually accidental and a simple 'cease and desist will resolve it.

If they are mimicking you, then passing off rules come into play

In other words, it's not something I'd be worrying about

 

[Ozzy]

The first word of my company's name is the city I live in then the service I offer

As these are common descriptive words and not unique, you won't be able to trademark it other than just the logo design perhaps. I feel the best advice is as @Mark T Jones comments.

Unless @RevoMark thinks differently of course

 

[Socio South West]

You have two very generic terms in your company's name: The chances of that being accepted for registration are as close to zero as you can get.
In choosing those words you have to accept that they could be high on the list for another company offering the same service in the same town that is choosing a name and hasn't heard of you,

Hopefully your presence on the web is strong, and anyone researching a business name will quickly find you: Make sure your Google Business profile is claimed and - assuming you have a website- your basic SEO gets you as high up the rankings as possible .

 

[RevoMark]

Sorry I am in Turkey on holiday so not following forum at the moment. The place where you live/work followed by a description of the service you provide (Surrey Window Cleaners for example) is not sufficiently distinctive to qualify for protection so you would not be able to protect it. Rather choose a name which is capable of distinguishing your business from competing ones. Don't choose a restrictive name either. What if you want to grow, expand out of the region or even franchise in future. A geographically restricted name would not let you do that.