Operating websites/businesses under one company name

xha1r

Good afternoon,

I am in the process of setting up my first company, with ideas/plans to set up more in the future. My question is, could I set up for example, 4 websites, named W1, W2, W3, W4, and have them operating as different services of 1 company, C1.

Would this still mean they all operate under limited laibility and that I would only have to submit one set of accounts, with W1, W2, W3 and W4 all listed on the same set of accounts?

Are there any legal implications of doing this? If I were to register the 4 websites as business names, would that mean that each must operate on it's own?

And how would I protect the websites from being used by someone else, who may set up a different company with the same name? I'm thinking registering them as trade marks but is that expensive?

Thank you for reading, all help is appreciated.

Regards,
JB.

DublinWriter

You can have your own Ltd company and register as many trading names as you like operating under the Ltd company with the CRO.

Trademarks are quite an expensive and protracted process. I registered an EU trademark myself about 5 years ago. I chose not to use a solictor/trade mark agent and it was quite a steep learning curve legally and set me back around €3,000, including me fending off a challenge from some company in Spain on my own.

Lurk

Be careful about rushing into setting up a ltd. company; if you don't expect too much turnover in the first year it may be wiser to operate as a sole trader. In any case, to launch a business you register it with the CRO...you register the overall company/business name, then you can set up different Web sites and operate them as "business name, trading as W1 (web site name)"..."business name, trading as W2..." and so on. (eg. ABC Promotions T/A getyourstuff.ie).

Are the four Web sites completely different from each other or related to each other? It seems very complicated for a start-up.
I can't really help with the separate accounts issue, as I only have one business name and one Web site, but this might help: http://www.cro.ie/template_generic.asp?ID=134&Level1=8&Level2=3&Level3=1&Level4=3&Level5=0

Trademarks are a good idea if you have a nice logo design...having the trademark also makes customers feel more secure. If you haven't thought too much about the logo, I wouldn't concentrate too much on it at this point, though.

When you have registered a Web site domain, that specific domain can't be used by anyone else, and in Ireland, the Internet registration office is quite strict on domain names that sound rather similar to existing ones.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

tbh - trademark only after you are sure that the business is worth protecting...

only reason why you might want to have the four businesses operating under four seperate LTD companies, is if you will be borrowing, and want to protect each of the businesses being negatively affected by borrowings and losses causing one of your businesses to be shut down. Although, there is a lot of extra paper work involved.

amir

Lurk wrote:

When you have registered a Web site domain, that specific domain can't be used by anyone else, and in Ireland, the Internet registration office is quite strict on domain names that sound rather similar to existing ones.

I have a problem...
I registered domain name .co.uk and the same domain name already exists but .com.
They are in the same business and I want to operate in the UK market. They are also from UK.
Would I be in trouble? It is strange that they didnot register .co.uk before?!
Their .com is not registered under trademark and business name is completely different that domain name.
Please help as I have to decide what to do.

amir

xha1r wrote:

Are there any legal implications of doing this? If I were to register the 4 websites as business names, would that mean that each must operate on it's own?

Hi,
Did you resolve that problem? I mailed cro about that and will see what they think. I will let you know probably tomorrow.

xha1r

With regards your first point, if that was in Ireland I don't believe it would be possible as it would likely to be a registered business name/company and therefore similar names would not be allowed? That is assuming the name of the website is the same as that of the name of the business/company?

That is purely my opinion, so please don't take it as fact; I'm merely assuming based on what I currecntly know.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have enough information to comment on how the .co.uk system works, but when I registered it I was asked for a business name, which I gave (I think), and received a letter a number of weeks later confirming I owned the domain? I can't remember if could have been used during that period as maybe they were checking it against other domains to make sure it was unique? Again, speculation.

amir

amir wrote:

Hi,
Did you resolve that problem? I mailed cro about that and will see what they think. I will let you know probably tomorrow.

cro didnot respond yet but I found on reg. form field: 'Other business name(s) under which this business is conducted'