What's in a brand?

Forming a corporation or LLC is one step in the development and protection of a brand. Protecting your company name with the Secretary of State in which your corporation or LLC is formed does not necessarily mean that your trademark or brand name is avaiable on a nation-wide basis.

If you’re building a brand, which may go beyond the formation of a corporation or LLC, then considering a trademark search is a good way to go. A good example is our own company. Our corproate name is “My Corporation Business Services, Inc.”, but our brand name is “MyCorporation.com.” We do business under our brand name, it’s simpler, it’s more catchy, and it’s more well known. For that reason, we made sure the name was available on a nationwide level – that it can be used without conflicting with another company.

To evaluate whether there are other companies using your brand, a trademark search is the way to go. It’s a great first step in the process because it’s better to make sure the brand name is available before you invest in the brand only to discover it’s already in use.

A brand can be a company’s biggest asset – look at Amazon, Nike, McDonands. It’s often not the products, but the brand names with which we are familiar. Familiarity often results in customer loyalty, and it all starts with the brand.

Deborah Sweeney

Deborah Sweeney is an advocate for protecting personal and business assets for business owners and entrepreneurs. With extensive experience in the field of corporate and intellectual property law, Deborah provides insightful commentary on the benefits of incorporation and trademark registration.

Education: Deborah received her Juris Doctor and Master of Business Administration degrees from Pepperdine University, and has served as an adjunct professor at the University of West Los Angeles and San Fernando School of Law in corporate and intellectual property law.

Experience: After becoming a partner at LA-based law firm, Michel & Robinson, she became an in-house attorney for MyCorporation, formerly a division in Intuit. She took the company private in 2009 and after 10 years of entrepreneurship sold the company to Deluxe Corporation. Deborah is also well-recognized for her written work online as a contributing writer with some of the top business and entrepreneurial blogging sites including Forbes, Business Insider, SCORE, and Fox Business, among others.

Fun facts/Other pursuits: Originally from Southern California, Deborah enjoys spending time with her husband and two sons, Benjamin and Christopher, and practicing Pilates. Deborah believes in the importance of family and credits the entrepreneurial business model for giving her the flexibility to enjoy both a career and motherhood. Deborah, and MyCorporation, have previously been honored by the San Fernando Valley Business Journal’s List of the Valley’s Largest Women-Owned Businesses in 2012. MyCorporation received the Stevie Award for Best Women-Owned Business in 2011.

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Ajeet says:

14 years ago at 11:49 AM

The constant struggle is to balance the requirement to be unique while desiring to be generic. All thanks to tradmark laws :)