I am a California LLC founded in 1999. We are a small business and develop Internet based software and host web sites.
We have recently found another company (Delaware corp, but also registered as a CA business) with almost the exact same name as us . . . just a vowel is different -- like McDonalds and McDinalds. They do the same things as us, Internet programming and web hosting. They started their business in 2002, three+ years after us. From their web site they look pretty dinky as a company, probably smaller than us. They are definitely doing business in California under this name:
We never knew about them until this week, when one of my customers brought it up as it turns out they are hosting their web site with the other company and email with us and were confused.
I spoke with my attorney and she is sending them a friendly nastygram and hopefully this can be resolved easily.
We have not registered our company name as a registered trademark or servicemark -- that's hindsight for you. My question is: is there any reason I should not pursue that now? My concern is that this other company has a similar name and it may somehow cause our application for the trademark to be rejected. My attorney was unsure if submitting an application now is a good idea or not. Thanks for any advice.
We have recently found another company (Delaware corp, but also registered as a CA business) with almost the exact same name as us . . . just a vowel is different -- like McDonalds and McDinalds. They do the same things as us, Internet programming and web hosting. They started their business in 2002, three+ years after us. From their web site they look pretty dinky as a company, probably smaller than us. They are definitely doing business in California under this name:
We never knew about them until this week, when one of my customers brought it up as it turns out they are hosting their web site with the other company and email with us and were confused.
I spoke with my attorney and she is sending them a friendly nastygram and hopefully this can be resolved easily.
We have not registered our company name as a registered trademark or servicemark -- that's hindsight for you. My question is: is there any reason I should not pursue that now? My concern is that this other company has a similar name and it may somehow cause our application for the trademark to be rejected. My attorney was unsure if submitting an application now is a good idea or not. Thanks for any advice.