George Michaelson mentioned the following in his e-mail yesterday:

>Don't you run the same risk com.au does in promoting state level business
>registration to "peer" with national/ASX forms in causing namespace collision?
>

A State Business Registration service always checks the ASC records before
allowing a state level business name to be registered, to ensure that there
are no conflicts. In fact, in NSW, they sometimes go overboard to ensure
that no conflict can be seen to arise. Thus, if I wanted to register a
business (not a company) in NSW as xyz and there was a company in WA called
xyz pty ltd, I would have to come up with something else. However, I'm not
allowed to add words such as Australia, Sydney, whatever on the end (xyz
australia) to differentiate from xyz pty ltd, as these are seen as generic
terms, not differentiation terms.

Also, conditions for registering both companies and businesses at state and
federal level state that the party attempting to register a name has a
legal obligation to ensure that the proposed name does not infringe any
trademark or other proprietary rights belonging to another organisation. By
stating this obligation on the application form, the ASC and the state
business registeries ensure that the applicant, not the registery or ASC,
is liable for any proprietary rights infringemnet.

Boz

Boz Cappie
Dept of Social Communication and Journalism
Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences
University of Technology
Sydney
Australia
ph: + 61 2 9514 1955
e-mail: B.Cappie§hum.uts.edu.au
--- reality is what you can get away with ---