The name of a business becomes its legal representation.
Naming your business is an important factor in branding your products and services, in creating marketing materials and for legal reasons like ensuring your business is properly licensed. Before wasting time by centering your business on a name that's not available and risking an application for registration getting rejected by the Secretary of State, it may be simpler to spend some time researching the name you've selected ahead of time.
Instructions
1. Go to the Internet homepage of the Secretary of State office (also called the Department of State or State Corporations Commission in some states) for the state in which the business operates. You can locate the home page by performing an Internet search under key terms "department of state", "sos" or "secretary of state" for the state in question.
2. Locate the link to the Secretary of State's online search tool for checking the availability of a name or for conducting a business search on the homepage. Both options may be present. Business searches return results for names of existing companies already registered with the Secretary of State. Checking on availability allows the user to determine if a name they'd like to use is already on file or being held by the Secretary of State and therefore unavailable. For the most part, the tools are located under the "Business Service Division" or "Corporations" categories under the names "Check Name Availability", "Business Search", "Entity Search" and "Look up Business Name." If you're unable to find the tool online contact the SOS directly and ask a clerk for instructions.
3. Conduct a search using the web form provided for the search tool. Some web forms are fancier than others in that you can search by type of business such as corporation, LLC, limited partnership and other structures and further break down the search into other descriptors by name, trademark, owner, registered agent and similar descriptors. In general, most searches simply require entering the name of the business name into a provided box and entering the information to prompt the system to return a result.
