If your personal name is not extremely rare there is probably someone with the same exact name as yours living within a 5 mile radius. Does that create problems for you? Probably not too often. Having two businesses operate under the same name would, on the other hand, create lots of problems for everybody. To avoid such problems there is a practice of trademarking names. Generally, names are trademarked on a state-by-state and country-by-country basis. To find out whether a name that you have come up with has been already trademarked you can obviously use Google. If someone is doing anything worth their while with that name you will find them (just be sire to put the name in quotes). However, in case there is a dormant company that has registered the desired name, you should go to uspto.gov.
By the way, there is no problem if you continue to use your personal name even if it happens to be Calvin Klein. Just don't market it!
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
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