united-states, intellectual-property, business-registration, copyright, sole-proprietorshipI finished creating an app and am expecting a good amount of users after I start advertising it. I live in Canada but I have my green card and am eligible to live in the US at any time. I plan on moving to the US within the next few months so I plan on registering the company as a US company. I plan on moving to New Jersey. With that said, at what point do I have to register my company / company name? Is it okay if I launch and advertise the app / website without registering the company and name first? (I’m asking because I am too busy to go all the way to NJ right now just to register the name and business). Or is the company and name registration mandatory before I launch and advertise the app and start getting users?
Additional info: I am currently the only worker and the only one creating the app (so I’m assuming it is a sole proprietorship) but after releasing the app and getting more users (in about a month after release) I plan on hiring a few workers.
Yep! Trademarks, like copyrights, are granted immediately. The rule for an implicit trademark is that it must be used in commerce, but releasing your app would satisfy that.
Of course, with trademarks, you can get extra damages if you sue and you put the whole country on notice of your use of the mark, which grants you the right to use the name anywhere in the nation, and is useful for cases like this, where your app will likely be used by people everywhere. So there’re advantages in doing it early, but you can definitely go and register it after you’ve been using it for as long as you want.
Business name registration is the same way, you can wait as long as you’d like.
The only hesitation is that you, first off, want to make sure you get the protection before anyone else tries to. You’d have the upper-hand and would likely win any suits, but that’s always more expensive than if you had the proper paperwork filed in the first place. And, of course, in registering a business, you’re relieving yourself of a lot of liabilities, which might not be a bad idea early-on but that’s out of the scope of this question.
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