Hi folks,

We have started a new clothing company and started selling off our website and at various shows etc. I have just discovered though that there appears to be a small shop in England trading under a vary similar name. We are known as X and they are X Clothes. What I was wondering was if anyone knew the legal side of things surrounding this? Ie. could they sue us for trading with a similar name in the same industry? or is there room for more than one?? We are purely online and shows and they seem to be purely a small shop. So for keeping things vague but I obviously don't want to get into bother....nor do I want to waste the money we've spent thus far on domain names, business card, advertising etc! We did do the best search we could at the time of starting for anyone else but I never included the clothes tag on google afterwards.
Thanks for any advice...
Oli.

I'd think that unless you are in direct competition you'd be fine. There are a number of very similarly named companies in the same industry (I work in banking for my sins) that have no problems.

There have been more and more failed attempts by larger companies to sue over the use of the name, Miccy D's being the one that springs to mind.

There's also worth considering if the shop is likely to ever come across yours, and if so are they likely to take action? It's very expensive to do so, so not really worth it for a small shop.


do we get discounts???



Mark

If you can find the actual name of the company (ie not just their T/A name) then you should be able to find out via companies house when they started trading, may well have been after you. Also if they have a website somewhere like Technolojik should tell you when it was registered.

IIRC the short answer is that unless they have registered that name you can use it as well.
Obviously it will do you no good if its too similar or you are operating in a similar market-place.
HTH
Cheers, Pewe

My wife ran a small catering business called Food for Thought for a few years. I Googled and found over 30 businesses with similar names, but nothing local to us, so she just used the name with no problem.

I would think that as long as a) they haven;t actually registered it and b) in practical terms you are unlikely to ever compete, you should be OK

Thanks guys, the name is deffinately not registered with companies house as I checked this. We could register it ourselves but its a £175 and I thought that it wasn't worth it for a few reasons: at the moment its hobby sized but getting bigger so not worth it, I think if you can prove you've been trading for longer under the same name I think it makes it null and void anyway and it would be very expensive to actually protect it.
The other company seems to be a small back street shop in London that don't do very much. Merely mentioned in Thomson local and Applegate. We are online only and stay in Aberdeen. Unless we get very big (hope so!) I don't think we'll ever really compete. There are a few other people on the likes of facebook etc advertising under a very similar name. ie we are Kush and they are Kush Clothes or Kush Clothing etc. I'm just working on our website at the moment (struggling with CSS and dreamweaver!)....would be gutted if we had to change it!
Cheers guys...Oli.