Newbie LLC/trademark question
 

My wife and I getting ready to launch an adult website soon and are forming an LLC for the business. Were a little confused if we need to trademark our company name or do we only use a trademark once we create a logo? Will the LLC formation protect our businsess name? Any information would be most helpful.

LLC does not protect your business name, unless you pay to register it in every single state.

The way to protect your name is to trademark it for what you will be using it for.

If you want your logo design trademarked, then you need to trademark the design too.

It looks like you want to do everything right, so first thing, go to irs.gov and get yourself and EIN for your LLC. It's free. You need the LLC name, an address and the name and SSN of an owner. This will be required for anything financial, including bank accounts.

LLCs are normally formed on a state level. Many states allow this to be done online, probably through the Secretary of State's office/site. $500 seems to be a common number. States run a check to prevent duplicate LLC names in their own state but don't check other states. From this, you'll get "Articles of Organization." These and the EIN should get you a bank account.

For Trademarks, it's all at uspto.gov. You can apply for a trademark online, I think it's about $325 now. Trademarks can be wordmarks like "Go fuck yourself" that can be in any type face or design or they can be logos or designs. One important thing to remember is that the USPTO requires that you demonstrate the trademark is in use. You will need to provide them with samples of things like business cards or letterhead or screen grabs of the site. You can start the process without but you will not get the trademark without demonstrating use. Figure on six months if everything goes to normal schedule. You can trademark a name with "com" at the end if you wish. If you really want to cover things, trademark both the name as a wordmark and your logo as a design.

Remember that a trademark does not prevent anyone from stealing your design any more than gun laws prevent criminals from getting their hands on guns. It just gives you a basis for suing someone for stealing it.

Now, this get a bit esoteric but is worth the time and cost if you want maximum protection for original material. If you sue someone you want the case to be in federal rather than state court because it's much, much more efficient and fast. Trademarks infringement can be either a state of federal case but copyright infringement is always a federal case. So copyright your stuff and it may help you in the worst case scenario.