Picking a Business Name: Make it a “Brand”
I’m not a marketing expert, but I deal in brands every day. My focus, of course, is on the legal side. I evaluate whether a business name or product name can be used without infringing the rights of third-parties, whether the mark can be protected by the client, and the relative strength of the proposed “mark.” There are generally two opposing forces that an entrepreneur faces when choosing a name: 1.) how “obvious” the name should be in relation to the services; and 2.) how “creative” the name should be.
Trademark law gives very broad rights to a trademark that is “made up” such as Kodak or Xerox. So, choosing a name that is entirely a made up word, or a word that has no relation to the services is generally the method of creating very strong trademark rights. It is also usually easy to see if anyone else has used such a trademark in the past because it is easy to search for something that is not a “real word” to see if anyone else has adopted it first. Here’s the problem for the small start-up: if you use a trademark that is a fanciful word that you have made up, no one will know what you are selling!
The other end of the spectrum is that many entrepreneurs select a totally generic or descriptive term for their business or product name. This presents two problems. First a name that “describes” the services or goods is not protectable, generally. Second, the use of a descriptive word as a trademark makes it difficult to distinguish from other sources of similar products. If I hope a cigar store called “The Smoke Shop” it is going to be easy for consumers to figure out what I sell, but I can’t stop others from using the name for other smoke shops, and I can’t distinguish myself from the other smoke shops.
In between descriptive trademarks and fanciful trademarks are a class of trademarks that are “suggestive.” Most great brands are somewhere in the range of “suggestive.” What I mean by this is that some marks are “highly” suggestive in that they almost describe the product or service, while others are mildly suggestive or “uniquely” suggestive, such as Google for a site that has “everything” or “infinity-ish” content. The word Google is not “made up” or fanciful, but it is not descriptive either. Trademarks that have the right amount of “suggestiveness” without being overly descriptive are often the best “brands” that enable the entrepreneur to tickle the consumer’s imagination, but also provide enough information about the product or service so that the consumer “gets it” immediately.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!


