You can copywrite a body of work, but not a title, name, or logo. Only a trademark can apply to these items.

The lawyer i talked to said you can legally trademark your business name simply by putting the ™ symbol after it in all places where it appears. However, if someone else already has that name trademarked you can get in a lot of trouble. For this reason you really should hire someone to do an official name seach first and make sure you're not stomping anyone else's prior claim.

Now, while this is a completely legal trademark, it isn't very enforceable. You may have a hard time defending yourself in court if you've only used this self-trademark method. You'd have to be able to prove first use of it which can be tricky. If you want to spend the money you can pay to register your trademark at the US Trademark Office (assuming you're in the USA, of course). I believe the filing fee is somewhere around $30 to $50. You'll be required to submit the name being trademarked as well as a graphic image of it if the layout or logo are an important part. You will also be asked to include at statement from the outfit that performed the name search since the US Trademark office won't do this for you.

Check out http://www.uspto.gov/

In Australia you can register any business name that is not already taken in the same field as yours, or even wider in the case of "big names" - that is, you can't register "Sony Garbage Collectors".

It costs about A$80 for 3 years.

The other thing you can buy is a domain name for your website.

Wow...Spot, Chien and Peter. Got some big fish tonight :).

Thanks for the tips, I'll check out the gov site. I already nabed the domain (using GoDaddy.com... good place for domains).

Any other experiences in this area would be helpful.... funny I came across a lawyer who needs some video services. Might be up for a trade of services :)

Thanks again!!

-J

Unless I misread something, the filing fee for "Application for registration" of a trademark is $335--OUCH! Boy, was I shocked.

J--

You register you name as a fictious name or DBA (Doing Business As). This doesn't require the license, which typically requires reporting for tax authority.

A qucik way to do a generic search is to just hit the main searh engines and key in your name. If you get hits, see if they are trademarked. Trademarking a term or word is hard unless it is made up. They won't give a trademark for "Video Wonders" as it is composed of common words (at least thats what they have told me in the past. They will allow the trademark of the graphical rendition.

Are people officially trademarking their production company names, such as "whippoorwill studios", and paying the $335? Another suggestion was to just add the tm after your company name or register under a bogus name to avoid the high fee.

I'm thinking about trademarking my production name, even though the company doesn't exist at this moment. What are your thoughts about trademarking names? Thanks.

bump.

Hey David,

I'm still looking into this also. You should definitely do this especially if you think it will go anywhere. And for some amount of protection also look at an LLC (plenty of info online and bookstore/local lib).

Curious, where did you get the $335 figure?

-Jason