The name of your business is the thing you’ll definitely have to think about before registering it at a local or offshore office.
In order to set up a new business, you must file formation documents with the chosen country. The international standards require new business names to be different from the names of the already registered companies. Thus, you won’t be allowed to choose a name that’s identical or too close to another business name.
Sometimes, the verbal identity you have come up with might seem very original and brilliant, but you should still check its availability in advance, so you don’t find the bad news at the registration window. This will save you time and help you avoid violating the law in the field of registration of legal entities.
So, what criteria should you consider and how to check whether it’s possible or not to register your brand-new company name?
First of all, remember that stuff like proper names, place names and known abbreviations will instantly lead you to a lot of trouble, because they’ll surely be already taken.
Think about another cool name and start checking its availability through your favourite search engine. Yeah, just Google it. You can try searching the name with a .com, or .org on the end to see if anything comes up and if there’s someone who got it ahead of you. If you chose to set up your business offshore, use the contrie’s name as a mandatory keyword. Explore the internet as deep as you can!
You should also do a more comprehensive trademark search, in order to see if there’s any other exact registration in the country you’ve chosen for your new business. To do this, simply contact a local clerk’s office and see if the specific name is registered or not in their database. After that, it would seem that you’re all good to go!
Not yet. Just because you haven’t found a business with the same name doesn’t mean there are no similarly named local companies. Corporations, sole proprietors, partnerships or LLCs may all exist under DBA’s. By checking these DBA registrations, you’ll be able to find out if there really is another business in your chosen area using the name you want to use.
Now, after checking the mighty internet, the local registration sites and databases, the lucky you must register the brilliant name ASAP, before it gets taken! A marvelous name will never be free for long, so be sure to protect it in every possible way!
