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Written by : Gudrun Pestone |
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hello and welcome i'm attorney thomas burton and today i'm going to show you how to see if your llc name is available now an llc also known as limited liability company is a great entity for many business owners forming a small business in their state i am an estate planning and business attorney licensed in wisconsin so i'm going to show you the process to see if your name is available in wisconsin but there is a process from what i am aware in almost all the states where you can form an llc all 50 states to search to see if the name is available before you file your application to form your llc so in wisconsin the department that handles these is the wisconsin department of financial institutions in many states it's the secretary of state's office so if you're looking for the government agency that handles llc's in your state i would google llc formation and the name of your state you could possibly put in secretary of state or also corporate name registry in your state but you want to go to the actual government website because that's where in wisconsin you can search for free and i believe most states now have moved to the online uh registration system so here on wdfi.org go to i want to search on the top left and then corporate records and you'll see that takes us right here to the search corporate records database and here you can search the legal entity name the date the entity type registered agent but you'll see right below it here in purple's name availability well it's purple for me it might be blue for you but if you just want to search the corporate records for the name availability this is the place to do it so let's go ahead and do a search here and i always suggest if you're working with your attorney or anyone else that you have three names in mind maybe your primary name and then a couple backups so i've done this before but badger best painting let's see if that's available in wisconsin and you can see it says no records appear to conflict with the name you entered although there appears to be no conflict final determination cannot be guaranteed so that exact phrase appears to be available but if you've watched some of my add your painting without the badge your best is already in use you see 2014 badger painting llc was formed in wisconsin and it's in appleton so you can't use badger painting and i'll just do one more example here in wisconsin the badger state badger is popular so if you search for bad day you can also see the badger company has already been taken but a less popular name like let's say john smith anything dad smith is popular but there appears to be no one no entity named john smith painting llc now that's the name you might want to go back to this or go to this advanced search where you can search by not just the exact phrase but using all of the words so you know before you are certain the name is available do some different searches like that one i just did there using all of the words that would be helpful because you can see what's out there for badger painting if you're considering using this name we've got a badger painting llc a badger painting comma llc but that was dissolved in 2017 badger custom painting badge of painting contractors badger state painting so that would give you an idea of if i'm looking to form my entity and call it badger painting what's out there because part of this is thinking about competitors as well if you're near any of these businesses like boomerang badger painting is in madison uh you might be advertising in their market and just not want a google search for their website to go uh someone searching for you to go to their website vice versa likelihood of confusion so think about that with your branding so part of this is legal what can you actually name the company and you can only name it a company that isn't in use now some of these that have been dissolved it's possible the department now would give you that name but just the caution i would consider whether you want a name some companies have bad publicity associated with them and so if it was recently dissolved like 2019 they might be gonna reinstate it by filing the fees or you know it could have on the internet some negative connotations and you don't want that associated with your new business if that's not really you so that's one example let's just try one more wisconsin painting here another popular name in wisconsin so you can see all the versions of wisconsin painting wisconsin's painting here someone has it in 2019 and there's different versions here bulldog central wisconsin so you can look through these and decide what you want to name yours now this is just using a popular name you can be creative and think out of the box when coming up with your name and that's how many great brands came up with their name and always can add words so you know you can do north west wisconsin painting especially if you're a regional basis and that looks available similarly badger painting might be taken but you could do northwest bad days so think about your brand where you want to operate things like that now in terms of the llc you don't have to name it if it's for a different type of entity and it you want it to be private not have anything to do with your brand you can just name it whatever you want you know you can name it bucky well that's a brand but let's say there's some uh your cabin is on forest road and you want to use that as the llc so look here's forest lake road so you can't use that but forest road llc might be available it looks like from this because if we just go back to the exact phrase there's no results so in general i wanted to show you how do you get to it and again i'll just run through from the home page here go to i want to search corporate records and then name availability to see if the name you're thinking about is available and if you're working with an attorney they'll run this search for you but before you meet with them it's a good idea to have your list down to top two or three names that you think would work and give it to them even if you did your search online and such and let them run a search as well make sure it appears to be available and then the final decision is up to the department of financial institutions when they examine your application your articles of organization you're proposing to file to determine if it's available but it's a lot better to just pick a name that's available before you submit and submit the articles using a name already in use as i showed you because then the department just has to inform you it's not available based on those grounds so i hope this video has been helpful to you as you think about forming your own llc if it has consider giving it a like and subscribing to the channel so more people can see and benefit from this information as well thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time
Thanks for your comment Gracie Bolins, have a nice day.
- Gudrun Pestone, Staff Member
establish your business protect your name and keep your profit [Applause] hi I'm Tammy Shambo day creator of ask Tammy live and I'm so glad that you are here with me today today what we're gonna be answering is the question where do I find out if my business name is taken so this video is going to be super short and sweet I'm gonna tell you some of the resources available to you to find out the answer to that question first of all I am so glad that you're asking that question because that means that you're trying to make sure that you're doing this the right way making sure that the name that you are choosing for your business is free from use is one of the most important steps you can take as a business owner one reason why is that when you're starting a business you usually can't take a hit for finding out that you're infringing on someone else's trademark it will put you in a terrible position if a company bigger and badder and more established than you comes and says hey you have infringed on my trademark you won't be able to stand it right and so we want to make sure that you are in a position to protect yourself so again to answer your question let's jump right in where can I find out if my business name is taken there are a couple of different spots and the best way to do this to be honest is to reach out to a trademark lawyer or a trademark professional who can search the gauntlet because these are the areas that you wanted to search you want to search of course the USPTO right that's where P and that's the United States Patent and Trademark Office that's where people who are registered trademarks have registered their names in order to put the world on notice that this is the name that they're choosing to do business with all right so that's one place all right you also can check all the different local laws or local cities so for example in Texas they have their own database of names that there's that have been used for their LLC's and corporations so you want to check your local bridges but if you are trying to take advantage of the internet and your client base is national or even international you're gonna want to do that thorough search in each region you're also going to want to make sure that social media handles so you're IG Instagram Facebook snapchat you want to see hey has anyone used name there you're gonna want to search domain names that means your website www.realisticpencildrawing.com and keep your profits if this video has been helpful to you this is what I would like to ask you to do please first of all let me know what was most useful right and then next I want you to subscribe to this channel so that we can stay connected and so that you can stay up to date with all the different things that we learn about the law I hope you have an amazing day go out there and be a boss bye
Thanks Stevie your participation is very much appreciated
- Gudrun Pestone
About the author
I've studied spacecraft propulsion at Auburn University in Auburn and I am an expert in experimental archaeology. I usually feel cheerful. My previous job was radiation protection engineer I held this position for 17 years, I love talking about vr gaming and djing. Huge fan of Keemstar I practice tai chi and collect books.
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