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I''m the admin coordinator for Family Christian Center, a non profit organization. Our staff is hard at work organizing a health fair for the community. It is more of a festival. We want to name this health fair/festival so that we can promote it to the community. What are the rules to name a festival? if another organization goes by the same name, can we get sued or penalized? How can we search festival names? do we have to register the name? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
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I am only licensed in California and not Arizona and the following analysis (which is not legal advice) is based on general principles of law. Using the name of another could be "unfair competition" or trademark/service mark infringement if the mark is registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office (and since trademark/service marks are based upon first use, failure to register would not be complete protection for you.) Internet search engines are a very good way of checking for conflicting names. Your state Secretary of State also will have a list of corporations and LLCs that might have the words in a name of a company. If you receive a cease and desist letter you should consult an attorney. Finally, the standard is "likelihood of confusion" so don't be "cute" and pick a name that is very, very close to an existing name.
Answered on Jun 14th, 2012 at 11:32 AM
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As a general matter, you can name your "festival" anything you want, but you cannot give it a name that is likely to cause an appreciable number of ordinary consumers to believe that your festival originates with, or is sponsored by, someone else. Anyone can be sued for anything. If you want to avoid this risk, you will carefully avoid using a name or trademark that belongs to someone else. You can begin a "common law" search for other similar uses with Google or another common search engine, An attorney can assist you in this process once you decide to refine your search and include state and federal trademark registrations.
Answered on May 20th, 2012 at 8:10 PM