QUESTION
If a name is trademarked by a company, are we allowed to use it as the name for our non-profit organization?
Asked on Sep 12th, 2015 on Intellectual Property - California
More details to this question:
We currently have a student organization at UCLA with a great name, and we are working on developing it into a non-profit organization. Unfortunately, we recently learned that this name has been trademarked by a company based in Canada. Are we still allowed to use the name for our non-profit? We are not sure if it would be appropriate to get their consent for using the name or if we would be able to create the non-profit under our family name a simply operate under the group name we have been using. Thank you.
1 ANSWER
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Your question is a bit hard to answer in the abstract. If the name is an original one, and the other party is in Canada, there is probably very little risk unless you are in a "related-industry" scenario. Much will depend if the Canadian firm is doing business in the US. You could try to obtain the consent, but if they don't know about your existance it might be like waking a sleeping dog.
Answered on Sep 15th, 2015 at 8:52 AM