Naming a business (Sole Trader)
Discussion
Hi All, posting on behalf of a friend. She's recently qualified as a fitness and nutrition instructor/trainer/whatever the terminology is. During her university course she offered voluntary fitness lessons for friends/family which got quite successful. Now that she's qualified she's transitioned into charging for sessions, and things are continuing to go well.
She's leaned on me a little bit to help getting up and running with a few bits such as e-mail addresses, accountants and basic business practise. She's on top of things like insurance and accounting, but something she raised when looking for a web domain is that another company within about 35 miles exists with a very similar name. This got her panicking a bit, but I'm not convinced it's a problem yet.
The company name is "Mission Fit", the "similar" name is "Mission Fit with Sally" (can't remember the actual name, but you get the point). Further research shows that "Sally" is a Limited Company and she actually has "Mission Fit" registered as the LTD Company name.
From an ethics point of view, she's never going to compete in her market and she has nothing to gain by masquerading as another company to try and win business - it's just not how it works.
Second, I can't find any sign that it's been registered as a trademark already. I've never really looked into registering trademarks before but after a quick read on the gov.uk site I'm not convinced that anybody would be able to register it anyway.
She's not too invested in the brand yet, a few t-shirts/mugs etc and an email domain - so she's looking to take the easy way and just rebrand, but honestly it's going to be very difficult to come up with something descriptive and unique so I'd personally rather she explores all her options here first and just stick to it.
I've suggested she reaches out to the local "competitor" with the similar name and just out of courtesy explain her goals and intended name and get a feel for whether there would be any conflict down the line - but that might be terrible advice.
Any thoughts from PH? In this day and age surely it's unreasonable for every small business/sole trader to work with completely unique names - and as long as you're not pretending to be a big-boy in an industry and tricking customers into your books, it shouldn't be a problem? Or am I being naive?
She's leaned on me a little bit to help getting up and running with a few bits such as e-mail addresses, accountants and basic business practise. She's on top of things like insurance and accounting, but something she raised when looking for a web domain is that another company within about 35 miles exists with a very similar name. This got her panicking a bit, but I'm not convinced it's a problem yet.
The company name is "Mission Fit", the "similar" name is "Mission Fit with Sally" (can't remember the actual name, but you get the point). Further research shows that "Sally" is a Limited Company and she actually has "Mission Fit" registered as the LTD Company name.
From an ethics point of view, she's never going to compete in her market and she has nothing to gain by masquerading as another company to try and win business - it's just not how it works.
Second, I can't find any sign that it's been registered as a trademark already. I've never really looked into registering trademarks before but after a quick read on the gov.uk site I'm not convinced that anybody would be able to register it anyway.
She's not too invested in the brand yet, a few t-shirts/mugs etc and an email domain - so she's looking to take the easy way and just rebrand, but honestly it's going to be very difficult to come up with something descriptive and unique so I'd personally rather she explores all her options here first and just stick to it.
I've suggested she reaches out to the local "competitor" with the similar name and just out of courtesy explain her goals and intended name and get a feel for whether there would be any conflict down the line - but that might be terrible advice.
Any thoughts from PH? In this day and age surely it's unreasonable for every small business/sole trader to work with completely unique names - and as long as you're not pretending to be a big-boy in an industry and tricking customers into your books, it shouldn't be a problem? Or am I being naive?
I would say that she could have an issue...
trademarks are simply a mark of trade - they don't need to be registered (though it helps in their protection)
If a potential punter living mid way between them were looking for this service - could they confuse the two - I would argue, yes therefore she is potentially breaching the trademark... and that distance between them means that their markets will be overlapping...
now would be a very good time to be unique and remove any potential for issues...
if you breach someone else's trademark the potential for damages is quite large - avoid it!
trademarks are simply a mark of trade - they don't need to be registered (though it helps in their protection)
If a potential punter living mid way between them were looking for this service - could they confuse the two - I would argue, yes therefore she is potentially breaching the trademark... and that distance between them means that their markets will be overlapping...
now would be a very good time to be unique and remove any potential for issues...
if you breach someone else's trademark the potential for damages is quite large - avoid it!
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