My company has a new logo and we are designing letterhead and business
cards. We are designing for our offices in the USA and in Hungary, and
we also have offices in Brussels and the UK (and potentially China in
the future). What legal information, if any, is required on both US
and European letterhead? (Of course we will put the company address,
phone #, and website.) In Europe, I've been told that many companies
include a bank account number or some such thing. Can you find out
what this is and if it's required? Lower-priority related question --
on business cards, is it important and/or legally required to include
the full, legal company name? Some say a logo will suffice, but the
logo in our case does not include the "LLC" (IE, if we were "Jones &
Sons" our logo would say that, but our legal name would be "Jones &
Sons LLC."

rsavestheday-ga:

I doubt there is legal requirement about letterheads and business
cards. What is legally required typically depends on the purpose of
correspondence or the document you are issuing. In Hungary, to give
you a concrete example, you identify a firm in a *contract* by its

- full legal name (including LLC etc.)
- registered address
- company registry number

When there is tax issue involved (you're issuing an invoice or
receipt, for example), you also include the firm's tax identification
number. Plus a whole lot of details about the transaction but that's
another matter.

Most Hungarian letterheads I've seen include

- full name
- address, phone, fax, email etc.
- company registry number
- tax id number
- bank account number

but this is not a legal requirement, just a courtesy to your business
partners so that they have all this information handy.

Source: doing business in Hungary between 1994-2000. There may be
newer regulations since then, for example, they introduced a European
tax ID number.

Foreign Companies that set up offices/branches here in the UK are
required to register with Companies House:

http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/

They will give you up-to-date information, which will probably include
Place of Incorporation and a UK Registered address.

There is certainly no requirement to give Banking Details and I do not
think that this is a good idea anyway.

Good Luck!

Bryan

As you know, Google Answers does not provide legal advice. 

The practice in the locations you mentioned is as follows:

In China (and probably throughout the EU, including Hungary), you DO
need to give the full legal name of a company somewhere on a
letterhead to let people know that they are dealing with a limited
company or LLC entity.

The full legal name need not appear in the logo.  For example, the
logo could say "Jones & Sons" only.  Somewhere else, e.g. in the
footer, the full legal name ("Jones & Sons LLC") would be given.

Customs for business cards are somewhat laxer in practice.  

In China, the official Chinese name of a company must be used.  The
English name is often different, however.  This is acceptable so long
as customers and others are not misled.  Again, the fact that the
company is an LLC or limited liability company must appear somewhere
in English as well as Chinese.

Hope this helps.