When I was developing a new company name, I created about 20 using this method, each time I would follow the steps through to create a name that was appropriate, unique and usable.

1. Get inspiration

First of all you have to select a few sources for inspiration. You need ideas as to what you’re looking for.

Most companies begin by thinking up variations of the activity they do (ie: for a company selling mobile phone: mobile, phone, cell, sales, etc), however sometimes a company may not sell anything specific, and may cover many different activities.

You can try investigating other company names, to see where they got their inspiration from.

Find words that you like, or that sound as if they relate to your general activities.

Look at your own name, and names of others involved in the company, see if they can give inspiration.

Place names are good too, see if you can become establish based on the name of your area.

2. Generate a unique name

Once you have your inspiration, there’s a few techniques you can use to get the unique name that you are looking for:

• Crossword Helper/Solver – This will allow you to use certain formulas to pick words. (ie: using the initials of the partners to help you generate appropriate words).
• Thesaurus – Allows you to find synonyms for words your choice of words.
• Anagrams – Use this with a combination of names involved in the company or such.
• Translator – Try translating a few words you’ve chosen to get that unique angle.

3. Validate it’s usable

You should really ensure that the name you choose is not in use, recommendations for ensuring they are not in use include:

• Check with your common sense – If your company is only open 12 hours a day, for gods sake, don’t call your company “24seven”.
• Checking with government departments (in the UK such as CompaniesHouse WebCheck).
• Check the registered trademarks database for your country and possibly major countries such as US and UK, as existing companies may wish to expand into your country, meaning you would not be authorised to use the name.
• Check with yellow pages, and ensure there’s no one already using the name.
• Check with Google, check for variants (eg: “my idea”, myidea, etc), if it’s commonly used by a website or company for their product or service, then chances are they could battle you over rights to the name. Avoid where possible.
• Check that there is no active domain name using your name, (eg: myidea.com). Sometimes domain names are not in use and are just parked/advertising/on sale, always check first.

Feedback

Once you have a sufficient amount of names, gather feedback from your friends and family.

I found asking them their top 5 and their bottom 5 helped narrow down the choices.

This will help you settle on a name that will work for you and your customers.

If all else fails…

You could always try the assistance of a naming firm or a company name generator, but there’s nothing quite like your own inspiration, so don’t give up straight away.

Note: I DO NOT help you choose a company name for free.

• You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say, “I’m fantastic in bed.” — That’s direct marketing.
• You’re at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says, “He’s fantastic in bed.” — That’s advertising.
• You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day you call and say, “Hi, I’m fantastic in bed.” — That’s telemarketing.
• You’re at a party and see a gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie; you walk up to her and pour her a drink. You open the door for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her a ride, and then say, “By the way, I’m fantastic in bed.” — That’s public relations.
• You’re at a party and see a gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says, “I hear you’re fantastic in bed.” — That? That’s brand recognition.

Now go get her, tiger!

Update:

• You’re at a party and see a gorgeous girl. You talk her into going home with your friend. — That’s a sales rep.
• Your friend can’t satisfy her so he calls you. — That’s Technical Support.
• You’re on your way to a party when you realize that there could be gorgeous women in all the houses you’re passing. So you climb onto the roof of one situated in the middle and shout at the top of your voice, “I’m fantastic in bed!”. — That’s Spam.
• You hear about women like this but never meet one. — That’s false advertising.

To put it simply, the majority of the time you won’t even need to copyright your website. This is because it is generally pretty easy to prove that you originally created it.

However, sometimes you may want that extra bit of reassurance to prove without a shadow of a doubt that you are in fact the true copyright holder of the website.

Under British law it is stated that the copyright is created when the creation leaves the creators mind and takes a physical form, so when it comes to websites it can become complicated.

One of the most popular methods of ensuring you own the copyright to your material is to follow these steps:

1. Get a few witnesses to sign and date a document that states they have checked the work, and believe it is original.
2. Print off a copy of the design and source code or place the material on a form of media (such as CD or DVD).
3. Place the print or media into an envelope (or package) along with the signed document.
4. Seal the package and send it to your or your lawyers address via special delivery post, this will be stamped and dated.
5. Do not open the package, leave it sealed and ensure it is stored safely.

This method has been proven to work in British courts in the past to resolve copyright disputes, however it may not always work, so always seek advise from a lawyer.

You could also try the UK Copyright Service or the UK Intellectual Property Office. Also see Copyright in the Wikipedia.

We found there were actually two websites in total, and they were using the name on other gaming related websites.

I’ve had to deal with trademark law in the past, earlier this year I was threatened legal action after purchasing “fixya.co.uk” and running a demo of eTicket there, consequently “fixya.com” contacted me asking me to surrender the domain to them as they hold the trademark. As eTicket is an open source project, I decided to let the domain go at their cost, soon replacing it with “fixr.co.uk” instead.

With an firm understanding of the severity of trademark law and yet only limited knowledge on the subject, my initial approach was to contact my lawyer and let him deal with it. However at the cost of £150/hour I hesitated in case we were unable to recover the costs.

The first idea was to see if we could contact anyone by phone and get the sites removed. We attempted to contact the person who registered one of the domains, who was unreachable, and we contacted the host of the other website who suggested they will contact their lawyer.

As far as we were concerned we had reached a dead end, however there was more that could be done, after all we had their email addresses, and basic information including name and location, but we had to do this right.

At this point I had two choices, I could simply hand it over to the lawyer as I had considered to do before, or handle it myself. I decided that in order to make this decision I needed to look into trademark law in more detail.

I found very quickly that there’s far more information on US trademark law than there is UK trademark law, however the basic principles are exactly the same.

I decided to take a look at some previous cases, “theregister.co.uk” usually has an extensive coverage of UK IT related law, including trademark law. So I googled it.

I discovered a term known as “cease and desist“, it seems to be more prominently a US term, however it is very much recognised in the UK as well. I quickly found some very useful examples of previous trademark “crease and desist” requests, which very quickly helped me get a good idea as to what we needed to do.

The first example was sent to a guy named Matthew Somerville from Odeon, I also found a database of trademark cases on “chillingeffects.org”. The most interesting and related case I could find was entitled “Blogger Gets Bagged“, it also has some useful trademark information under the letter.

One very important point I took away from reading the above websites is that if we don’t defend our trademark, we risk loosing it, therefore by law, to ensure we remain owners of the trademark, we MUST pursue any possible infringements.

Based on this information I decided to construct a “cease and desist” letter. In order to do this I had to outline some core points:

• Who we are – You need to state who they are dealing with, and who you are, else it looses credibility.
• Who they are – You need to state who you think they are in the context of the issue (ie: “You” referring to the administrator of the “offending website”), this ensures it reaches the correct person.
• The violation/infringement – What are you accusing them of?
• Why we believe that – You must state why you believe they are in violation.
• A request to cease and desist use now and in the future – This is the action request, the whole purpose of the letter.
• An outline of our intentions should they not co-operate – If they do not want to co-operate you must let them know that you will pursue all available legal and equitable remedies to recover its lost profits, damages, costs, and solicitor’s fees.
• Any other laws they could be violating – For example, sometimes by deliberately not co-operating they could be subject to other laws.
• A sign off point – Make a point that you’re not unreasonable, and wish to get this resolved.

It’s all fairly straightforward apart from “violation/infringement” and “why we believe that”. To resolve this you need to know where you stand with British law, and in this case in particular, trademark law.

Luckily there’s plenty of resources out there on the web that can help you with trademark law, including the “Trade Marks Act 1994“, the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) website (on trademark) and Wikipedia trademark entry, some major points I took away from this are as follows:

• You do not need to register a trademark to own the trademark.
• A (R) registered trademark is different to a trademark (TM).
• You own the trademark if you “trade as” that name.
• There is no central database for trademarks or intellectual property.
• You must not use a name or mark that could cause confusion.
• The name or mark you use must not be similar or even confusing similar to anyone else’s trademark.
• Lord Woolf’s 1986 report Access to Justice identified the need for parties to see legal action as a last resort.

As long as you understand these points and are not infringing the law itself, then you have a strong case against the other party.

I sent this letter to every single email contact related to the offending website(s) I could get my hands on, this proved to
be successful and before long I was in a dialogue with the website administrator.

Due to my new found firm understanding of trademark law, I made it very clear that I would not let this lie, and let them know that they could not use our trademark or anything confusingly similar. I asked them if they were willing to co-operate, and after a bit of clarification they agreed to stop using our trademark, they were happy to “leave this in the past and just go our separate ways”.

If they had not agreed to co-operate, it would have been very easy to take this further. However, it’s advised to take on the “mediation” by the IPO, if such an event occurred, failing this, it could innitiate legal proceedings by entering the court system.

Please Note: I am not a lawyer, this information could be incorrect, if it is incorrect I invite you to correct me. You must consider this information as “to the best of my knowledge”, always seek a lawyer’s advise if you are unsure.