cutcomp
28 posts since
Apr 23, 2009
8.
Re: Other Company with same name May 12, 2009 2:14 PM

in response to:
KayPolanco
It can be difficult to sort out this issue. I started my company, Advanced Insurance Management, as a sole proprietorship back in 1987. I applied for and received a trademark on that name back a few years ago, but that gives only limited protection. First off, my trademark only applies to specific kinds of commercial enterprises, not to others. So there is some other insurance related entitity that started a couple of years ago, in some other part of the country, that uses the name Advanced Insurance Management. Since they don't do the same kind of work we do, it's probably not a fight I could win--at the very least, I've decided that it's not worth the effort to find out. They don't do the same kind of work we do, so it's probably arguable that there could be confusion caused by their use of that name.
Back in 2006, I changed my business to an LLC, we're now Advanced Insurance Management LLC. That may give us some additional protections, but who knows.
This trademark stuff can be difficult. Back in 1995, I published a book under the title CompControl (because it was all about how employers could control their Workers Comp costs.) But I didn't register that term as a trademark back then. When I subsequently tried to do so, back in 2007, I learned that someone else had already done so--and my use of the term for my book gave me no claim over the term. I had to remove that term from some of my web materials, because the person that had registered the name contacted me and pointed out that they held the trademark (and we were both in similar kinds of work.)
Your best bet, I think, would be either come up with a new name, or some more unique version of this name that you could then trademark. (VisionOne Productions? Vision 1 Productions? You get the idea.)
Good luck.