Starting a small company, need legal help

[kdneo]

Myself and my cousin are looking into starting a small internet sales based clothing company. I am wondering what I might need to do to protect the name we choose, and our logo, or if I even need to worry about it. We are looking into making simple things like t-shirts and things like that for right now. I am mainly not so worried about other people stealing our material right now, as I am getting in trouble with some major company for accidentialy using thier name or design or something like that. Is there a way to make sure what we want to do is legal or do I have to shell out the $300 to apply for a trademark?? Also, with a copyright, would I need to copyright all the shirt designs we make or just our general logo??? Thanks for any help!!

 

[charlesesq]

Myself and my cousin are looking into starting a small internet sales based clothing company. I am wondering what I might need to do to protect the name we choose, and our logo, or if I even need to worry about it. We are looking into making simple things like t-shirts and things like that for right now. I am mainly not so worried about other people stealing our material right now, as I am getting in trouble with some major company for accidentialy using thier name or design or something like that. Is there a way to make sure what we want to do is legal or do I have to shell out the $300 to apply for a trademark?? Also, with a copyright, would I need to copyright all the shirt designs we make or just our general logo??? Thanks for any help!!

You should worry about these things if you are serious about your business beyond just the "try out" stage. The name is simple enough -- first do a search in your state corporations database since you will likely want to incorporate with that trade name. You may want to further check in the government's trademark database at http://www.uspto.gov/ to see if the name is being used in the same line of business. There will be a whole lot of useful information there.

With regard to your logo, you may need to trademark it, not copyright the logo. That is different than copyright for a "work of authorship" such as a painting, design, music recording, book, etc. Good luck with the business.