Know-How Exchange : Taglines/Names

Posted on your other question too - this time with suggestions for domain names at the end.

To my mind, if they're established in another country, you could call yourself "Chic Empire" where you are - but do go along to the Chamber of Commerce (or whatever it's called where you are, where businesses are registered) and make sure that it's not taken in your country. Do also check with their website (terms & conditions) that they're not operating wherever you are.

Online is a little different, but the-chic-empire would be seen by the search engines as a TOTALLY different site.

Realize that https://chic-empire.com to a computer is - 011010000111010001110100011100000011101000101111001011110110001101101000011010010110001100101101011001010110110101110000011010010111001001100101001011100110001101101111011011010000110100001010

https://chic-empire.biz looks like ... 011010000111010001110100011100000011101000101111001011110110001101101000011010010110001100101101011001010110110101110000011010010111001001100101001011100110001001101001011110100000110100001010

and

https://the-chic-empire.com looks like 01101000011101000111010001110000001110100010111100101111011101000110100001100101001011010110001101101000011010010110001100101101011001010110110101110000011010010111001001100101001011100110001101101111011011010000110100001010

can you see the differences? No, nor can I, but a computer can.

In fact, if you want a space - a computer needs to be told it's there using this code: 00100000. We just sees a gap. Computers don't do gaps, that's when they crash.


chic-empire.biz is available*
thechicempire.com is available
the-chic-empire.com is available (I didn't check this as hyphenated versions are less popular).

(*bear in mind that whilst the others may be taken, they may not be being used)

Hope this helps. M

Business name is a name that a business uses for trading commercial products or services. A business may also use its registered name.An effective name is one that establishes a strong identity and describes the type of business you are conducting.

I they hold a trademark in your country in your product category it can be a legal problem, but if they are in a different country and there is no or minimal cross-border trade it shouldn't be a problem. There are lots of examples of different companies with similar names eg Sun, Apple, Guardian, Smiths in different countries and different industries.

The only difficulty you have is that if someone looks up your business or tries typing in your business they may get to this other site (and vice versa for the other business). It's then down to you if this bothers you.

As Saul said, this is a trademark issue. And it depends on what country you are in (so what the laws are that you need to follow), whether that other company has a presence in your country, whether people could get confused by your company and their company, etc. Without knowing much more details, we can't answer the question about whether using a name with "The" in front (or even the name without "The" in front) would work.

I would start by researching the trademark laws for your country. You may want to consult with a trademark expert or attorney.