Clearing your brand name is necessary as if you don’t you may later discover you are using a name someone else owns and that you cannot continue to use. It is not sufficient to just check for available domain names or company names.

Of all the Intellectual Property (IP) laws, copyright is the most wide ranging in scope and application, and hence important for business owners to understand. Obviously, if yours is an industry, like music or technology, where copyright plays a central part, you will need to know the copyright law related to your industry quite well. One way in which copyright in many countries differs from other forms of IP is that there is no official registration, or fee, required to obtain its protection.