How often is a registered business name already a federal trademark?

Last updated August 31, 2026.

Between 3.6% and 8.6% of the business names on a state register also appear as a federal trademark, depending on the state. Across the registers measured below, that is 331,887 names.

Everyone in this field tells you that state registration and trademark protection are separate systems. This page measures how far apart they actually are.

Read this before the numbers

These figures are a floor, not a risk score, and they are easy to over-read. Three limits apply:

The index counts live registrations only: registered, not abandoned and not cancelled. It is built from the USPTO extract current to March 2024, so a mark cancelled since then would still appear.
Only exact normalised name matches are counted. Real trademark conflict turns on confusing similarity, so these figures are a floor rather than a ceiling.
A mark only conflicts within its class of goods or services. A clothing mark does not block a plumbing company of the same name.

The overlap, by state

Registered business names matching a federal trademark, by state
Jurisdiction	Distinct registered names	Name also a federal mark	Share
Alaska	99,328	6,916	6.96%
Oregon	530,494	25,347	4.78%
Connecticut	1,146,971	45,221	3.94%
Colorado	2,640,124	90,378	3.42%
Pennsylvania	2,164,709	64,112	2.96%
New York	4,070,204	99,913	2.45%

The pattern worth noticing is that the rate rises as the register gets smaller. Alaska’s registered names are more than twice as likely to match a federal mark as New York’s. A small register is proportionally more national brands registering to do business there and fewer purely local companies, so the share of names that are somebody’s brand goes up.

Which classes the collisions fall in

A trademark only conflicts within its class of goods or services, so where the collisions land matters more than how many there are.

Trademark classes most often sharing a name with a New York registered business
Class	Covers	Name collisions
009	computer and electronic goods	19,819
035	advertising and business services	13,727
025	clothing and footwear	12,904
041	education and entertainment services	12,622
042	science and technology services	9,973
036	insurance and financial services	8,515
003	cosmetics and cleaning preparations	8,235
016	paper goods and printed matter	7,020
028	toys and sporting goods	6,836
030	staple foods	5,839

How old the colliding marks are

Every mark counted here is live: registered, not abandoned and not cancelled. Age is worth knowing on its own, because a mark still on the register decades after registration is one its owner has kept renewing.

Age of the marks colliding with New York business names
When the mark was registered	Collisions
2016 or later	121,623
2006 to 2015	59,091
before 1996	42,113
1996 to 2005	25,427

What it looks like in practice

Examples of names appearing on both registers
Registered in New York	Federal mark	Registered	Classes
"COUNTRY" CLUB, INC.	COUNTRY CLUB	2018-06-19	028,035
"OMAR KHAYYAM" CORP.	OMAR KHAYYAM	2018-04-03	033
"COUNTRY" CLUB, INC.	COUNTRY CLUB	2021-05-25	032
"COUNTRY" CLUB, INC.	COUNTRY CLUB	2018-10-02	034
1 HOTEL CENTRAL PARK, L.L.C.	1 HOTEL CENTRAL PARK	2024-01-30	035,036,037,041,044
10 FINGERS 10 TOES, LLC	10 FINGERS 10 TOES	2019-04-30	041
10 MINUTE LOCKSMITH, LLC	10 MINUTE LOCKSMITH	2018-08-21	037,040,042,045
100 DEGREES CONSULTING, LLC	100 DEGREES CONSULTING	2024-01-16	035,041

What to do with this

A state search clearing your name says nothing about the federal register. They are different offices with no connection between them.
The state will not check, will not warn you, and will accept the filing regardless.
Check the federal register before you print anything, not after.
If your name is in a crowded class such as clothing or business services, check harder.

Method. Names from each state's complete business register were normalised (uppercased, punctuation removed, entity designators such as LLC and Inc stripped) and matched exactly against the same normalisation of 3,374,058 federal trademark records.

Common questions

How do I check if a business name is trademarked?

Search the federal register at the USPTO, which is separate from any state business register. Every search on this site also checks the name against the live federal registrations we hold, which is a signal rather than a clearance.

Can I use a name that is trademarked in a different industry?

Sometimes, because trademark rights are tied to classes of goods and services. A clothing mark does not automatically block a plumbing company of the same name. Whether yours is far enough away is a legal judgement, not a database lookup.

What happens if my business name infringes a trademark?

At minimum a demand to stop using it, and rebranding after trading under a name is expensive. This is the situation the check exists to warn about, and it is worth an attorney before it becomes a dispute.

Sources reviewed

The sources below were retrieved and confirmed in August 2026. Filing requirements and fees change with legislative sessions and agency rulemaking; check the state’s own page before acting on anything here. This page is general information, not legal or tax advice.

United States Patent and Trademark Office trademark case files.
New York business register, published as open data at data.ny.gov.
Pennsylvania register at data.pa.gov.
Colorado register at data.colorado.gov.
Connecticut register at data.ct.gov.
Oregon register at data.oregon.gov.
Alaska register at commerce.alaska.gov.
Trademark classes follow the USPTO identification manual.
Matching performed by EntityFinder against its own copies of both registers, refreshed nightly.

Other questions about the name itself, and the registers they apply to: