Ever have one of those weeks? Well, we did last week. Turns out that a part of my business name is “TradMarked” on a national basis and I was sent a cease and desist letter by a law firm representing another Exotic Rental Car Company. So, we retained our own lawyer for advice and guidance.

Turns out, it may be more trouble to fight it even though the issue is “shaky” at best. Costs is the main issue for me as a startup, so we’ll look at modifying the name. At first I was thinking about changing the spelling just to “p-ss” them off, but it looked unprofessional and really, modifying the name isn’t that big of an issue.

My company name is “Altitude Dream Cars” and it’s simply a DBA under the LLC we formed. The issue is with the term “Dream Car”. Even though there are several other companies around the country using regional identifiers in the beginning and using “Dream Cars” as part of the name, it’s still a trade mark infringement. Fortunately, the term, Altitude is not in question and it’s the predominant word and image in my logo and brand.

I was thinking about just changing it to: “Altitude Dreme Kars” because words and spelling was the issue and technically, they couldn’t touch this one. But, it looks so unprofessional, that it’s not going to happen. So, now I’m thinking about these possibilities.

• Altitude Specialty Cars
• Altitude Specialty Rental Cars
• Altitude Specialty Car Rentals
• Altitude Exotic Cars
• Altitude Exotic Car Rentals
• Altitude Exotic Rental Cars

We’ll see how the next review and search of these goes. We’ll soon be one of the above names after my legal council researches the names and we get it trade marked ourself.

Shane

Posted: August 15th, 2007 under Personal.
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