Whose Name Should I Apply For My Trademark With?

Typically, big corporations don't ask this question because they have already figured it out. They already know through their corporate lawyers which of their entities should hold onto their intellectual property.

Also if you are a one-man show without a company, you also won't be asking this question because it's obvious: the only way you can trademark your brand is to file it in your own name.

Filing a Trademark For a Partnership

If you are a partnership, if there are a few people who are running a business together without setting up a separate company, which, by the way, is something that I strongly recommend against when filing for a trademark. 

Because partnerships can be very, very dangerous, because it's not really an entity, it's an agreement. If something goes wrong, each of the partners can be liable for everything that somebody else, one of the other partners, did. 

If they took a loan and disappeared to the Bahamas, then the other partners would be personally liable with their personal assets for that loan. So, if you figured out that your business has a chance of becoming successful if you have other people on board, set up a company. 

It's very simple, it doesn't cost a lot of money, it's fast and it's certainly a lot simpler to untangle if things go wrong. Plus you can't file a trademark on behalf of a partnership, again, because it's not an entity. You would need to file any trademarks personally. 

Filing a trademark for a partnership is not an easy process, and it’s always easier to establish a company before filing for a trademark.

Filing a Trademark As a Singular Owner

The other situation is when one owner owns a company, so it's a corporation with a single owner and there the question is, Do I file it in my personal name or in the name of the company? 

Most of the time, it doesn't matter unless you are planning to have investors or having other shareholders who would be interested in getting the brand. In this case, it’s better to file in the name of the company.

But if you are not seeking investors and if you're planning to keep 100% ownership of the company, it really doesn't matter if you trademark the brand alongside the company unless there is a risk of your company going bankrupt. 

If your company goes bankrupt and the company owns the brand, then the brand is going to die along with the company. In that case, the only way for you to save the brand would be to assign the trademark back to you before the bankruptcy starts. 

Even if you think bankruptcy is unlikely, if you think there’s just a 1% chance of it, it might be safer to file under your own name rather than the company.

Luckily, you can always move the ownership of your trademark, even if it is just the application stage, so you can assign the trademark registration or the trademark application from you personally to your company or vice versa. 

So, again, if you are the sole owner of your company and don’t plan on relinquishing full ownership, it’s not important whether you file under your name or the company name.

Filing a Trademark For a Company With Multiple Owners

And the last type of situation is when there are several owners of the company and, at that point, the answer is usually very obvious. You would file it in the name of the company because it would be very difficult for one of the co-owners to explain to all the other co-owners why the trademark is owned by just one of them, not all of them. 

When multiple people own the company, all of those individuals have an equal share in the ownership of its trademarks as well.