Business name registration is not a guarantee that other people don’t have rights to the name

A pending, or registered, trade mark may be grounds for another party to stop you using your registered business name

Look for potentially conflicting pending and registered trade marks before adopting a trading name

- look before you leap!

In this video Patent and Trade Mark Attorney Michael Buck discusses a common problem that arises where a business or product name is settled on without checking if other parties already have it registered as a trade mark.

Other parties may be able to enforce their own right to the name, for example, under the common law tort of Passing Off, under the Trade Practices Act or, as discussed in this video, by virtue of their own registration of the name under the Trade Marks Act.

Make sure you understand that none of business name, company name or domain name, registration actually gives you a guarantee that you can use your chosen name in trade. Check to see if you are likely to infringe any third party rights to the name you’ve chosen.

This 4 minute video discusses the issue in greater detail…

http://www.patentsandtrademarks.com.au/01video.html