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Originally Posted by cutman2000
You really cleared up validated a few things for me. Thanks.
But one more thing. Unless a landscaping company is planing on franchising itself out, or working nationally, is the trademark necessary for our industry?
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One reason to do an actual trademark is that it offer's more protection locally than just registering your company name with the State. Here in MA for example if you are a LLC, Corp, Inc, etc you are registered with the state, but if you are a DBA under your self personally you register with your local town. But if you are for an LLC and you have a DBA that is a subsidiary of the LLC then you do not need to register the subsidies name. Basically say your state registered company is Joe's Landscaping, LLC; while no one else can register that name with the state, a company called Mike's Construction LLC could establish a subsidiary named Joe's Landscaping. If it was ran as a division and DBA of the parent company then it would not need to be registered with the state.
Also I missed part of your question in your first post. If you trademark your name you have little ground to stand on in regards from keeping someone from using it, if they were using the name before you trademarked it. If you were to try report them to the feds for trademark infringement, they would simply need to show anything dated that they have that shows how long they have been using the name. More than likely they will not be forced drop their business name, but you will still be protected from somebody new starting up in the same town with your name.