Sometimes clients ask about trade name rights.
Trade names are formal company names. They can be registered with the Secretary of State, which will prevent another business in the same state from registering the identical name.
Beyond that, they’re not very useful. Indeed, business owners should forget about them when looking to protect their rights. They instead should focus on protecting their trademarks.
A trade name can certainly be a trademark. In fact, they often are. But it is the branding of goods and services with the name — and the reputation that follows — that creates trademark rights. The more a customer is exposed to a brand, the more rights that arise in the mark.
Registering a trademark is the best way to maximize one’s trademark rights. Registering a trade name hardly does anything.
For practical purposes, business owners can largely forget about trade name rights. Their place is on letterhead, business cards, contracts, and bank accounts. For example, Doctor’s Associates Inc. owns the SUBWAY brand. But the consuming public just knows the sandwich shops as SUBWAY. That’s the name that counts, and it’s the one Doctor’s Associates would rightly fight to protect.
Trade names serve their purpose, but they don’t do much in the realm of trademark law.