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Same business name, different country
Posted by Anonymous . updated on 2/26/2009
My partner and I recently started a new venture in the United States, and we have a great name for it and started branding all of our products with the name. We did do due diligence in checking to make sure the name was unique. One day, just to see if anything from our own website was coming up in Google, we typed in our name and a few resumes popped up with the same company name as ours! Upon further research we discovered that this company was once located in Australia, and it appears as though the company went bankrupt, had its name bought by another party, and then they never did anything with it. All of these events happened to the Australian company about a year ago.
I don't really know if I should be concerned or not with this, if we should come up with a new business name just to be safe, or if we should just do nothing. No US federal trademark exists for the name and we were planning on registering it. We don't want to start an international incident, so your opinions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks 
Answers (1)
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JSonnab...
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As a general proposition, the only prior use that matters is use where you intend to use your mark. If you intend to use the mark only in the U.S., then, by and large, only U.S. prior uses matter.
You should be aware that you seem to be operating under a very common misconception. The test is not whether your mark is "unique" or whether the mark already "exists" in the federal database. The test is likelihood of confusion, and so your mark may be infringing a senior mark even if the two are not identical.
- Jeff
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