How would I go about finding out if the name of my future company is already registered/reserved by someone else? It'd be a terrible lawsuit :(

Could I check the business registration information for my state (Pennsylvania)? Thanks for the info.

Basically, I know in Canada that when you register the name of your business a search is made to verify that this name does not already exist. You have to pay for this report, but it's worth it. After you know the name is not taken, you can register/incorporate the name.

City Hall?

you hire a lawyer in most cases if you want to be sure. there are some that specialize in that sort of research.

Greetings:

The Harrisburg Corporation Bureau allows you to search their records.

See http://www.dos.state.pa.us/corps/cwp/view.asp?a=1093&q=438350&corpsNav=%7C

Your best bet, to play safe, would be to use an attorney.

Ignorance will not count as an excuse if you use an on-line search tool yourself, and miss something.

Thank you.

I do not believe a lawyer is needed to search for this information. It is just a more expensive way of doing it. Every State and Province has their records in an online database which can be searched by paying a fee of roughly $75 (to search and register the name for a couple of years).

This is called a "Business Name Report".
Depending on whether or not you would like to incorporate a different search is required.

In Canada a good site to use is CyberBahn.com

Search yahoo! for an American Ministry of Consumer and Business Services.

Greetings:

From my experience, usually a company is started with the goal that the company will last a long time.

If that's the case, the investment in some one who knows how to do the searches properly; and who knows that similar names may cause problems et all may be a good investment.

Thank you.

In Canada a Nuans report can be obtained from any corporate registry. You can reserve a name for upto 90 days without actually registering the name. After 90 days you either re-reserve the name, incorporate or let the name go.

I am pretty sure there is a similar service available in the USA.

As well. There is a difference in registering a name Provincially and Federally.

To do the actual incorporation, do get a lawyer if you are not sure of what you are doing. I have incorporated 4 businesses in Canada myself and only used a lawyer for one as it was a more complicated corporate structure than a standard incorporation.

Thanks for all the information, everyone. I'll be sure to hire an attorney when the time comes to build my own corporation. This was more of an informational question than how I'm going to do it.


Thanks!

Originally posted by iTec Hosts
In Canada a Nuans report can be obtained from any corporate registry. You can reserve a name for upto 90 days without actually registering the name. After 90 days you either re-reserve the name, incorporate or let the name go.

I am pretty sure there is a similar service available in the USA.

As well. There is a difference in registering a name Provincially and Federally.

To do the actual incorporation, do get a lawyer if you are not sure of what you are doing. I have incorporated 4 businesses in Canada myself and only used a lawyer for one as it was a more complicated corporate structure than a standard incorporation.

That Nuans report was what I was refering to above, I just couldn't remember the name. In the Untied States do you have federal and state incorporation or just federal?

I do not believe a lawyer is needed to search for this information. It is just a more expensive way of doing it. Every State and Province has their records in an online database which can be searched by paying a fee of roughly $75 (to search and register the name for a couple of years).



Anything worth doing, is worth doing properly.

If hiring an attorney for something like this, is too expensive, one should rethink their ambition to go into business, until they can afford to do things properly.

Online resources do not carry EVERY business, as it is updated by human beings. An attorney can access actual documents that may not have made it online yet, or at all, and they know what they're looking for.

It would be a shame to spend $75 on a "do it yourself" effort, only to get sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars later, because you overlooked something.

Hire an attorney.

Originally posted by 93.3
That Nuans report was what I was refering to above, I just couldn't remember the name. In the Untied States do you have federal and state incorporation or just federal? Incorporation in the US is done by the individual states, there is no federal incorporation or business registration.

That's the obstacle to doing this kind of research using a "free" resource, like a government-operated site: you'd have to check all 50 states. Of course for many businesses it doesn't really matter if a local business in another state has a similar name, so in a lot of cases checking just your own state of incorporation is enough.