A site for searching if a business name is being used.

[piglet33]

Hi,

I am in the process of setting up an online business for my cards and other papercrafts. I found a website that was great for telling you if a company was using your name already but I can't find it again! Anyone know of a good one I can use?

Also any ideas for a good name. My name is Victoria Bell, I work with my mum Sharon and my dog is called Bailey. Can't work anything out from these but I am sure there is someone out their who can!

[spagbog]

depoends if you are setting up as a ltd co. you can get a list of all companies at companies house website. Careful with names as some might be copyrighted. To check available domains yuo can use almost any website domain sellers site.

Im sure someone will be able to give more helpful information soon fo ryou.

[CeeGee]

Check for names here http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/domains or as spagbog said, any other domain host.

I think BaileyBellCards has a nice ring to it (no pun intended) but as my business name is very boring I'm probably not the best person to advise!

[ladyluckjewellery]

BaileyBell jumped straight into my mind too when I saw the names, I think it sounds nice and I doubt if there will be many co.s with the same name.

Companies House is a good place to search, but a company will only be on there if it is Ltd. Otherwise, I use google and search for as many different variations of the company name as I can think, and if it doesn't pop up in the first couple of pages, it either doesn't exist or is fairly small anyway.

I'm quite sure I'm not the only Lady Luck Jewellery (I know of LLROK over here and Lady Luck Jewelery in USA) but as long as you aren't trying to pass yourself off as someone else, there is very little that another company can do if you have the same name.

HTH

Claire

[xrheax]

BaileyBell sounds great!!!!!

My website name is daft....someone started it for me and most of my online customers know me by rhea (which isn't my real name) so it made more sense to keep it.....

[MrSwirl]

depoends if you are setting up as a ltd co. you can get a list of all companies at companies house website. Careful with names as some might be copyrighted. To check available domains yuo can use almost any website domain sellers site.

Im sure someone will be able to give more helpful information soon fo ryou.

Trademarked, yes. Registered service marks, yes.

Copyrighted - no.

[MrSwirl]

as long as you aren't trying to pass yourself off as someone else, there is very little that another company can do if you have the same name.

Tell that to Mr. Harrod, who trading with his son, and known locally as "Harrods" registered the domain name "harrods.co.uk"

Until he was sued for it and lost. Lousy decision, but that's the legal precedent now.

[ladyluckjewellery]

Tell that to Mr. Harrod, who trading with his son, and known locally as "Harrods" registered the domain name "harrods.co.uk"

Until he was sued for it and lost. Lousy decision, but that's the legal precedent now.

Crikey!!! That's really quite scary, although I suppose with Harrods being as big as they are they have a fair bit of clout.

A friend of mine has a Ltd co with a name of (for example) 'AB designs' and another company, doing exactly the same as him started up nearby and called themselves 'A&B Designs' even using a similar style logo, and he was told there was nothing he could do about it:mad:

Claire

[sunrise]

I want to make up a site in the new year using mr site and calling ourselves sunrise cards
I've looked on the link on here and sunrisecards.co.uk is available and theres a price for 2 years should I purchase it or can we just call ourselves sunrisecards I don't really understand it all.

[CeeGee]

You can call yourself Sunrise Cards without paying anything, but sunrisecards.co.uk would be your website URL (prefixed with www. of course) if you wanted to buy it. Is that what you meant?

[MrSwirl]

Crikey!!! That's really quite scary, although I suppose with Harrods being as big as they are they have a fair bit of clout.

A friend of mine has a Ltd co with a name of (for example) 'AB designs' and another company, doing exactly the same as him started up nearby and called themselves 'A&B Designs' even using a similar style logo, and he was told there was nothing he could do about it:mad:

Claire

It's a grey area - the Harrods case was a landmark, and not in a good way at all.

I took a module in "New Technology and the Law" when I was at university - even my professor (who helped draft the Data Protection Act and is recognized as a leading expert in the field) was shocked when Al Fayed won that one.

If there is a deliberate attempt at passing off, then there are things that you could do. If there isn't, then it's much harder - some people (particularly those across the Atlantic) may try and issue a "cease and desist" letter to get you to stop, but if you think you have a defence, then it's worth not giving in.

Some years back, I worked for ICI. The ici.com domain name had been taken by an insurance company in the States, who had the initials "ICI" - there was nothing that they could do apart from buy the domain back from him at a significant cost.

Some people will surrender the domain name for a fee, some for free - it depends on the cause really. Firefox.com was given to Mozilla by the person who registered it first, for example. McDonalds.com was sold to them for a donation to charity (it was claimed by a journalist as an exercise in protecting your brand identity online :))

[sunrise]

right I've taken the plunge and bought mr site
we want out website to be www.sunrisecards.co.uk or something along those lines
do I have to buy that name ??? this is where I start to get confused
if we trade as sunrise cards but don't buy the name and someone else out there is using the same name could we be in trouble ???

[AnnieAnna]

As a sole trader.....
I was told you can trade under any name you like as long as you put your real name and address on your paperwork. So letterheads, invoices, receipts, business cards etc.

Then you have to have a little think about whether calling yourself Walt Disney or Ronald McDonald is going to be worth the aggro if they accuse you of stealing their name.

I suggest doing a google search for sun rise cards in various configurations and see what it throws up. If there is someone with that name in your town I'd think twice but if they are in Australia I don't think I would loose any sleep over it.

Your website address is a different thing.
You do have to buy that. Beware the evil people who have bought up names and will charge you silly money to buy them back. Don't play their game and they might stop doing it (I wish). A dot co dot uk name should be around £7 for 2 years. Dot com seems to have gone up to £10 a year. Don't pay more. Do clever things with the spelling like jewellery/jewelry if www.sunrisecards.co.uk (http://www.sunrisecards.co.uk) is already nabbed and you want to cling to sunrise. And they have just invented a load of new dot endings to confuse you further. If you are dipping your toe in the water I'd say just buy one web address (URL) but you might be kicking yourself later because eg if you had www.sunrise.co.uk (http://www.sunrise.co.uk) some evil bod might start trading with www.sunrise.com (http://www.sunrise.com) and you will be very, very cross if you have spent a lot of time, effort and money promoting the sunrise brand. In the old days the solution was simple. Buy dot co dot uk and dot com but now there are so many endings it's got silly. To buy them all up you need to be a millionaire before you start trading!
AnnieAnna

[CeeGee]

right I've taken the plunge and bought mr site
we want out website to be www.sunrisecards.co.uk (http://www.sunrisecards.co.uk) or something along those lines
do I have to buy that name ??? this is where I start to get confused
if we trade as sunrise cards but don't buy the name and someone else out there is using the same name could we be in trouble ???

MrSite includes the hosting in the package - you'll be able to register the name when you start setting up the website.

[sunrise]

thats brilliant

thanks for the advice

[Julesjewels]

Have a look at anewbusiness.co.uk

You can search all names registered by sole traders, ltd companies, trademarks & web addressess that have already been taken.

Hope this helps

Julie

[stallfinder]

I'd definitely try to go with something as unique as possible to avoid confusion and so that you appear high up on search engines if someone searches on your company name. Like many of the other posters, I like BaileyBell - how about BaileyBell Designs?

If you can afford it when you register your website domains, consider whether there's any slight variations that you might want to register as well and both the .co.uk & .com We searched and registered ours using Domaincheck.

Gail.