Registering Trading Names in Other States/Territories?

Hello

If an Australian company had a website that sold goods or services Australia wide, would that company have to register their trading name in each State/Territory?

Each State/Territory seems to have the following rule: "If you wish to carry on business in another State or Territory, the business name must also be registered there."

Can anyone provide information about how this applies to websites.. Does offering goods or services interstate constitute "carrying on business"?

*In this circumstance the company name will be different to the trading name*

Thanks for any feedback.

My understanding is that it depends on where you physically operate your business from.

If you operate your business from WA, you don't need to register a business name in SA to sell to people there. However, if you set up a warehouse or sales office in SA, you would then possibly need to register you business name there.

Do I need to register a business name? : Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation

Note that you may want to protect your business name from being registered in another state by registering in other states yourself.

For example if you were trading as "sailalias sails" in WA, there's nothing to stop someone else registering exactly the same name in another state.

It's a little bit different with Pty Ltd company names, which are registered at a national level.

There is a slight complication with websites - does the location of where your webserver is hosted impact on where you are operating your business from? I wouldn't think so, but it is an interesting thought. I would just go with where your registered office is.

Thanks Sim, exactly the information I needed.

In my case the registered trading name is the actual domain name of the website. I'm fairly certain the protection is already there because when I registered the trading name they required the whois data of the domain name to verify I was the owner. Maybe at a later stage I will apply for the trademark anyhow.

Also had pondered this.. Agreed that the registered address should suffice, although the business only consists of a website with no bricks & mortar shop or office... The server is offshore regardless.. No doubt that might create some issues somewhere along the line

Thanks again.

I've been pondering the same question of late.

Most of my sites are hosted in Australia, but I have two large sites hosted in the US. I am a little concerned about the legal implications if I get sued or if there are any other issues - I believe that the location of where the site is hosted can determine the legal jurisdiction covered by any action.

I really don't want to be answering to US courts!

I have heard a bit about the server location determining legal jurisdiction however for civil disputes I can't imagine it weighing into the matter too much. It might even be better to have a website hosted on a US server, they appear more supportive in regard to online business. Not speaking from personal knowledge here (or anywhere else for that matter ) but I assume their laws are more progressive too. I think it looks better to host a website on a server in the US compared to a lot of other offshore locations.. Prices seem cheaper in the US compared with Australia, especially when running large websites.

Yes, unless my business was focussed on a specific country or region, I would either host it in Australia or the US. I think the US is ideal from an internet geographical point of view - it is largely the hub for most international traffic, so is theoretically going to give the best performance to the most people for a diversely international site.

The sites I host in the US are large, high traffic sites where the costs to host locally are still too high to justify hosting locally. One of the sites has a very international focus, so being in the US is actually ideal in relation to being closer to the source of my traffic (UK and then US are the two largest sources).

The other site is focused solely on Australia, and I would prefer to have it hosted in Australia, but the costs are still a bit too high given the level of traffic the site generates. Hopefully I will be able to move it back onshore in due course - even though I find performance surprisingly good, my locally hosted sites are even better. It would also remove any confusion as to the jurisdiction should that ever arise.

I suppose the location of the registrar where the domain is registered might also need to be considered.

Have a good one.

I wouldn't think that would really have much to do with it. I've never heard of anyone being sued in the US because they used GoDaddy to register their domain name. It's just a name.

Unless you are talking trademark infringement based on the domain name, I would think that it is the content of the site which is the issue, not the domain name used for the site.

Interesting thought though.

Hi,

Very interesting discussion and very informative.

I have just posted a thread earlier along similar lines of discussions here and I am sorry I didn't see this before I posted mine, however, it's a question regarding how to protect your domain name and how far one has to go in order to register company names and business names.

I asked my accountant(may not be the right person) and he wasn't sure and he thought it is possible for someone to take my domain name away if they go off and register a company name if not already registered.

Please refer to my post so you can get a background on the information and picture I've painted.

Look forward to some comments on this topic.

[QUOTE=Gato15;74743]I asked my accountant(may not be the right person) and he wasn't sure and he thought it is possible for someone to take my domain name away if they go off and register a company name if not already registered./QUOTE]

No, your accountant isn't the right person - you want an intellectual property lawyer who has experience with internet domain names.