Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: Fashion Brand Copywritting

Your approach sounds a little bit backward - first, select some name(s) you like, then retain an attorney to run a comprehensive search to determine their availability. If so, have the attorney register the trademark(s). Copyrights are for literary material; trademarks protect the brand names and logos you inquired about. I offer these services if you are interested - please see my website for more information.

Re: Fashion Brand Copywritting

First, it sounds to me as though you need a list of trademarks, not copyrights. Copyrights protect literary and artistic works such as books and paintings. Trademarks protect names, logos and the like used in trade.

The closest you'll come to finding such a list is the records of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Although a serious trademark search would have to be international, a check of the U.S. list is a good starting point and should also turn up the more important European, Asian, etc. brand names.

The data base cab be searched on-line at www.uspto.gov.

Note that trademarks are registered on a product-specific basis. That is, for example, "Ford" is registered for use in connection with autos and trucks, but perhaps no one has registered it for beer or for yard goods. So, your search process should involve coming up with possible names, then checking each one against the on-line register to see if it is available for apparel.

Once you have selected one or more names that seem to be available, I recommend having an attorney do a further check. The fee to apply for a trademark is (I think) $325 per name, per product category, and it takes about 10-12 months to process an application.

Please also note that unless a trademark is actually used in commerce, your registration will either not be granted or will in time expire. For this reason, there are a lot of expired trademarks in the USPTO data base (usually so identified.)

Finally, please note that the correct terms are "copyright" and "copyrighted" rather than "copywrite" and "copywritten." It has to do with an author's "rights" to the material rather than the fact that he wrote it.