Advice for choosing a product name

Often times I deal with individuals who are  introducing a new product and they are excited they have a great product name in mind!  Nothing takes the shine off that excitement like learning that your great name you thought up is already registered with the USPTO or a domain name registrar, even though nothing notable may have come up in a general internet search.  The shine is really taken off if you have already spent money developing a logo or product packaging.  It does not always occur to these very enterprising individuals to do a USPTO or domain name search, and these are usually some very smart individual.  When searching for a product marketing name, or company name, I always recommend searching the  USPTO and doing a domain name search as the very first steps.

The best place to search US Trademarks is the Unites States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) at uspto.gov.  The USPTO has as search system called TESS (Trademark Electronic Search System) which you can use to conduct a free online search of the USPTO database. 

Search Trademarks

There are many domain name registrars and they will all have tools to look up domain names.  A reputable hosting company and domain registrar I often reccoment is 1and1.

Some other word tools:

thesaurus.com is a good tool for looking up similar words (synonyms) in your product name brainstorming process (Their companion site for looking up word meanings is dictionary.com).  You might also want to us a rhyming dictionary such as rhymezone.com or rhymer.com among the many online rhyming dictinaries.

Now that you are done finding that perfect product name you are ready for some supporting product development and marketing:

• Product logos and symbols
• Product packaging
• Product animations
• Product graphics
• Printed sales materials

Good luck and Happy Sales!