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"Having a catchy name for your business or product is more important than ever.\u00A0 A memorable name will help people find your company\u2019s website, Twitter feed or Facebook page or find related reviews or apps.\u00A0 Even a great product or company will lose some of its shine if customers and potential customers can't locate it on the Internet.\r\n\r\nIn the era of social media a name or logo can be the primary way a company is identified in every nook and cranny of the Internet.\u00A0 This is the domain of trademark law.\u00A0 At its most basic, a trademark is something that can identify the source of a product even if that source is unknown.\u00A0 You don\u2019t need to know anything about McDonald\u2019s to know that a hamburger stamped with the golden arches is going to have the same flavor, quality, and price in Minnesota as Boston.\r\n\r\nA trademark can be nearly anything, so long as it creates a mental connection between the public and a product or company.\u00A0 A word, color, sound, image, or even a smell can be protected for a particular market, industry, or use so long as it creates that mental connection. \u00A0The dot com boom created a new naming scheme which has taken fanciful and arbitrary names into the main stream.\u00A0 The ways in which trademarks are protected can be complicated, but the two main paths are to create a connection between a common word that describes the company or to take a word that is unrelated or made up and make that word stand for your company.\r\n\r\nFor example, Kodak is a term that was created by George Eastman specifically for his business.\u00A0 It was different and unique and had nothing to do with film or pictures in the beginning, it was just a new word.\u00A0 The same is true for Pepsi, Xerox and Lego \u2013 all created, tied to a company and eventually gained mindshare among the consuming public.\u00A0 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak did something similar when naming Apple.\u00A0 While Apple Computers would have legal battles Apple Corps, the record label of The Beatles, Jobs and Wozniak essentially took a term unrelated to technology and gave it meaning through their products, advertising and the awareness of the consuming public.\u00A0 As we have seen, this sort of branding had been around for a long time before the Internet but the dot-com boom kicked off a new trend of arbitrary naming.\u00A0 Companies from Amazon to FireFox to DogPile chose names that did not describe their function or product but gained this meaning over time.\r\n\r\nBecause many Internet businesses are built upon technology created by someone else, such as Twitter clients using the Twitter API, it is not uncommon to try and share in that companies branding and naming. But this may pose challenges.\u00A0 Unlike the parody video, adding \u2018tw\u2019 to the front of any word does not necessarily make it a better word.\u00A0 Twitter itself was not formed until after Leo Laporte started his This Week In Tech podcast and similarly named TWiT network.\u00A0 This created an awkward branding problem. \u00A0What was created on Twitter? Twits or Tweets?\u00A0 Twitter themselves claim \u201C[t]he Twitter name, logo, Twitter T, Tweet, and Twitter blue bird\u201D as trademarks but what about twitpic?\u00A0 While Twitter warns against using Twitter in a username, company name or book title if it makes a product or company appear to be an official Twitter partner they have been more open with Tweet, allowing others to use it even though Twitter seeks federal trademark registration ford the word.\r\n\r\nIf you\u2019re starting a business or launching a product, the first step to do is make sure no one else is already using the trademark you have your heart set on.\u00A0 In the United States, it\u2019s easy to search federally registered marks.\u00A0 While are not required to register in the beginning, or at all, you don\u2019t want to find yourself on the other end of a lawsuit by an unhappy potential competitor either.\u00A0 So go out there and create, in dot-com style, a unique business with a name all your own."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2010/09/23/startups-whats-in-a-name/>