Checking whether a business name is available means running four separate searches, not one: the federal trademark register, your state’s business entity records, the domain, and the social handles. Each one answers a different question, and passing one tells you almost nothing about the other three.
That matters because of how the order usually goes in practice. Someone lands on a name they love, finds the .com is unregistered, reads that as a green light, and starts spending — logo, signage, vehicle wrap, packaging. The trademark conflict surfaces nine months later in a letter from somebody else’s attorney. By then the name is on the building.
The four searches below take an afternoon and cost nothing. Do them before you fall in love.
Search one: the federal trademark register
This is the one with teeth, so start here. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office runs a free public search at tmsearch.uspto.gov. (If a guide sends you to something called TESS, that guide is out of date — TESS was retired in November 2023 and replaced by the current system.)
Search your exact name first. Then search the parts of it, the obvious misspellings, and anything that sounds like it said out loud. Trademark conflict is not about identical strings; it turns on whether consumers would likely be confused. A different spelling of the same spoken name, in the same line of business, is a problem. The same word applied to something unrelated usually is not — which is why a plumbing company and a software company can share a name without either one being wrong.
What you are looking for is a live registration or pending application in a related class of goods or services. If you find one, the honest move is to pick a different name. The expensive move is to decide it is probably fine.
If the name is clear, here is what the next step costs: a federal application runs $350 per class, maintained by a declaration of use between the fifth and sixth year at $325 per class. Those are the USPTO’s published fees, and worth knowing early — “one class” rarely covers a business that sells both a product and a service.
Search two: your state’s business entity records
In New Mexico this is the Secretary of State’s business portal at enterprise.sos.nm.gov, and it is free to search. What it tells you is whether an LLC, corporation, or other registered entity is already on file under that name in this state.
Here is the part people get wrong: clearing this search is not trademark clearance. The state is checking whether your proposed entity name is distinguishable from other names in its filing system, so two businesses do not get mailed each other’s paperwork. It is a recordkeeping test. The Secretary of State will happily register an LLC whose name infringes somebody’s federal trademark, because that is not the question it was asked.
If the name is clear and you are not ready to form the entity yet, New Mexico lets you reserve it: $20 holds a name for 120 days. That is a reasonable hedge while you finish a brand project, and the 120 days is a usefully honest deadline.
New Mexico also runs its own state-level trademark registration through the Secretary of State, starting at $50 including one class, with additional classes priced per class. It requires a physical New Mexico address and covers use within the state only — a cheap layer of protection for a business that will never operate outside New Mexico, and no substitute for federal registration if you have ambition past the state line. Fees change, so confirm the current amount before you file.
Search three: the domain
Check the .com. Then check whether anyone is actively using it, which is a different thing — type it into a browser and see what loads. A parked page means the domain is for sale at a price. A real business on it means you have found a competitor your trademark search may have missed, because plenty of businesses operate for years without ever registering a mark.
Unregistered use still creates rights. Common-law trademark rights attach to actual use in a geographic market, registration or not. A company that has been trading under the name in Santa Fe since 2010 has a claim to it here even with nothing on file at the USPTO.
Search four: the handles
Check the two or three platforms you will actually post to — not all of them. Chasing a name that is free on every network ever launched is how people end up with four consonants and a number in their business name.
This is the lowest-stakes search of the four. A handle you cannot have is an inconvenience. A trademark you cannot use is a rebrand.
Why distinctive names clear faster
There is a pattern in which names survive all four searches, and it is not luck. Descriptive names — the ones built from the words for what you sell — are crowded by definition and weak to protect. Trademark law gives thin protection to terms the rest of an industry needs in order to describe itself.
Distinctive names clear more easily and protect better. They also give a designer something to work with. When I built the identity for RA Organics, a superfood juice and smoothie lounge here in Santa Fe, the name belonged to the founder, Arjuna Ra — and it carried a visual idea with it. The identity is built around a custom Eye of Ra illustration, which exists because the name pointed somewhere. A name like “Santa Fe Organic Juice Company” has no such door in it, and would have been a slog to clear besides.
So the availability check and the brand work are not separate chores. The name that is easiest to own is usually the name that is most useful to build on.
Do I need to register a trademark to use my business name?
No. You can legally operate under an unregistered name, and using it in commerce gives you common-law rights in the geographic area where you actually trade. What registration buys you is reach and standing: a federal registration covers the whole country rather than your immediate market, creates a public record that turns up in everyone else’s clearance search, and gives you a far stronger position if you ever have to tell somebody to stop. The practical rule is that the more you plan to spend building equity in the name — signage, packaging, advertising, a decade of word of mouth — the more the registration is worth. A business that will always be one location in one town can reasonably skip it. A business that intends to grow should not.
When to stop searching and call a lawyer
Your own four searches are a filter, not an opinion. They kill bad candidates cheaply, which is their whole job. They are not good at the close calls.
Bring in a trademark attorney when you find something adjacent and cannot tell whether it is a conflict, when you are about to commit real money to signage or packaging or a product run, or when you intend to file federally. A clearance opinion costs a fraction of a rebrand, and the analysis a lawyer runs is genuinely different from reading a search result.
The short version
- Federal trademark search — the one that can force a rebrand. Search sounds and parts, not just the exact string.
- State entity search — tells you if the name is filed here. Not trademark clearance.
- Domain — and check what is actually running on it, because unregistered use still creates rights.
- Handles — the ones you will really use. Lowest stakes of the four.
- Favor distinctive over descriptive. It clears faster and designs better.
If you are working through a naming decision now and want a second read on which candidates are worth clearing, that is a conversation worth having before the searches, not after. Patrick Iverson has run an independent practice in Santa Fe since 2001 and builds brand strategy and visual identity for New Mexico businesses — including the part where a name has to survive contact with a trademark database. Send over your shortlist and we will talk about what each one would cost you to own.
