Congratulations! Your company has a great new product or service and you get to create a name for it. (In a perfect world, a positioning strategy would have been developed prior to product development. If not, stop right now and put one together. It will ensure your brand strategy---and the name--- is on target.)

Keep in mind that coming up with a new brand name can be challenging---you’d be surprised how many people have come up with the exact same name that you thought was completely original.

Be sure to screen the trademark status of name concepts as you and your team come up with them---before you, your boss or your client fall in love with a name that you find out is already owned by the competition. Ouch.

You can do a preliminary check online of name concepts by using TESS, the Trademark Electronic Search System of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, aka USPTO (Our government does love acronyms, don’t they?) Be sure to check dead as well as live trademarks, and check variations in spelling, plural versus single, etc. Keep in mind that even if you see a favorite name trademarked, you may still be able to trademark it if it is not in a competing category. Or, your search may show that it’s clear, when it isn’t. TESS is useful as an early screener only.

BTW, not sure what the difference is between a trademark and a service mark? Click on the links to get your lingo straight, or check out brandeopedia for these and a bunch of other marketing terms.