When you incorporated, you likely had to file Articles of
Incorporation with the NY Secretary of State. Your act of
incorporating would preclude others from INCORPORATING in New York
state with a similar CORPORATE name; to allow many CORPORATIONS to use
the same name would cause confusion and create an opportunity for
consumers to be defrauded by a later INCORPORATOR who wants to fool
people into thinking he is actually the same as the earlier (genuine)
INCORPORATOR. I am capitalizing key terms because you indicate in
your question that 2 or 3 other businesses have begun using a similar
name. I infer that they are not INCORPORATED, as I doubt the NY
Secretary of State would permit the incorporation. That does not mean
they could not be, e.g., New Jersey corporations doing business in NY.
Or, more likely, they are not incorporated at all--they are just
businesses who have APPROPRIATED a name similar to your corporate
name. This is not inherently illegal, but you may be able to stop
them from using confusingly similar trade names (as business names are
called in trademark law) under trademark law. The problem is that you
have stated that there is no confusion, and confusion, or more
accurately, the likelihood of confusion, is required to prevail in a
trademark infringement suit. So, for example, if you incorporate as
Zorgon, Inc., a New York corporation and you make and sell golf clubs
under that brand name, I likely could not go and INCORPORATE Zorkon,
Inc., in NY for the reasons I mentioned. But I could certainly open
up a business and call it Zorgon and Associates (or whatever) and you
could likely do nothing--unless I was also making and selling items
related to golf or golf clubs under the ZORKON brand AND there was a
likelihood that consumers would be confused between our two companies. |
