November 28, 2009 
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 11:43 pm and is filed under Small Business, Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Many businesses use trade names when doing business. This is different then the legal business name. Usually the trade name is a catchy name that is associated with the product or services. You can register the trade name in the county where the business is located. The trade name is also known as a fictitious name or d/b/a name. You can trademark a trade name but you do not have to.
The trade name is registered through the Master Business Application. You can list each trade name you want and there is a small fee for each. You can search the Department of Licensing for business names and trade names availability. Keep in mind that if you search to see if anyone else is using that trade name and the results come back No Matches Found, this does not mean that someone else is not using it. It just means that it is not registered. You can find internet small business resource for your state to obtain more information on this.