Legal Considerations For The Small Business
You have a great product or service and you want to create a business online to market and sell your offering. You likely will have (at least at the beginning) production, operation, and/or delivery issues that will require your focus and attention.
However, during your initial start-up, there are a few important legal concerns about which you should also be thinking. Although there are many legal matters (employment issues, consumer protection, advertising and data privacy issues) that may require more of your attention as your business grows and becomes more established, here is a list of six basic concerns that you should consider when starting your business.
1) Naming Your Business: If you are going to conduct business on the Web and want customers to find your site, you are going to need a company name and a domain name for your business that is distinctive, does not already infringe the trademark rights of another business, but that is readily accessible by customers. Select two or three names for your business and then do the following:
a) “Google” your business name to see if any other company is doing business with your name and is offering similar products or services;
b) Go to the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) web site found at: http://uspto.gov/ and on the left side menu click “Trademarks”. In the menu that opens up choose ” Search TM Database (TESS), type in your name to see if anyone has, or has filed, a trademark registration for your business name;
c) Finally, search a WHOIS domain name database http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp to see if your business name is available as a domain name.
If no other business appears in your Google search and you find that other businesses have not filed a similar registered trademark or domain name, then you can feel somewhat confident (but still not 100%) that your business name does not infringe the trademark of another business. After completing your research, you should register your business domain name (.com and .net extensions are the most popular).
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