Imagine this: you want to sell widgets, and youve chosen the perfect name for your brand new widget business. Youve made the name original and yet homey, easy to say, hard to forget, and youve checked databases everywhere to make sure that nobody else thought of it first. Youve invested vast sums of money in marketing materials and storefront signs that include your wonderful new name. Best of all, youve already impressed some new widget customers with your amazing services and they are spreading the word that your businessyes, the one with your fabulously unique nameis the place to go for all their widget needs, bar none. You love your new name.
Then picture this: shortly after your widget shop opens for business, you learn that a guy two blocks over is using the same name, for a strikingly similar widget business. Thats your name hanging in his window, by God! Customers are getting confused. Your business begins to drop off and you suspect the other widget guy is getting the customers who were looking for you.
Is this nightmare scenario possible?
Sadly, yesbut only if you dont know how to protect your corporate name properly.
The first thing a new...