How do you trademark a business name?

In the United States, trademark rights arise principally from use in commerce rather than from registration, so a business using a name in a market has some common law protection in that geographic area without filing anything. Federal registration with the US Patent and Trademark Office extends that protection nationwide, creates a public record, provides a legal presumption of ownership, allows use of the registered symbol, and gives access to federal courts. The application fee runs a few hundred dollars per class of goods or services, and the process commonly takes many months.

The step people skip is the clearance search, and it is the one that saves money. Search the USPTO database, state registrations, business name filings, and ordinary web and domain searches before committing to a name, because discovering a conflict after you have printed signage, bought a domain, and built recognition is expensive. The most common substantive rejection is likelihood of confusion with an existing mark, judged on similarity of the marks and relatedness of the goods, not on identical spelling.

The second most common failure is choosing a descriptive name. Trademark strength runs along a spectrum: fanciful invented words are strongest, arbitrary words unrelated to the product are next, suggestive names that hint at a quality follow, and merely descriptive names are protectable only after they acquire distinctiveness through years of use, while generic terms are never protectable. That is why Best Plumbing Services is nearly impossible to protect and an invented word is straightforward. Registration also requires ongoing maintenance filings at set intervals, and a mark can be lost through abandonment or through becoming generic, which is what happened to aspirin and escalator.