COMMENTS
How about ediew.com ?
what I like about this domain is that it has only 5 letters. I think (hope) it reminds of such words as 'edit', 'view', 'education'. What do you think?
The spelling can be ambiguous. But I never spell youtube right. In fact there is always ambiguity in the English spelling. Unlike in Russian or German.
Vitaly: meh. I have no idea how to pronounce "ediew" -- I can't even figure out the first sound, or how many syllables it has. Ee-dee-ew? Eh-di-wh? A-diew?
YouTube is a compound of two common English words. Ediew is not the compound of any English words.
Oh, and I disagree about German. I've only studied German for a few years, but it seems to have ambiguity, too: how can you tell if a consonant is doubled? Compare Turkish, which has no digraphs or diphthongs.
You're quite right to bring up the issue of trademark availability for registration -- coming up with a good name is a key strategy -- but all the hard work can be ruined when you receive a trademark cease and desist letter from another company using the same name that you just adopted.
What most people miss is that the issue of potential trademark liability is just as important in selecting a company name for a new startup as the issue of trademark 'registrability.'
In the US, registration is not required for trademark rights -- this is the opposite of almost every other country. The US has a common law trademark system, with state and federal registration systems that coexist (they coexist in a messy way, and it's expensive for all trademark owners to identify acceptable names and then police their rights against latecomers).
The first person in the US to adopt a mark and use it, is the trademark user with superior rights. Being first in time to use a name for a particular product or service will beat out any subsequent uses for the same product or service, even a later user who receives a registration without knowledge of the prior user.
For this reason, merely checking the USPTO is not enough. That only contains registrations used in interstate commerce, ie, sales and services across state lines. You must also check each state's trademark registry for long-term owners who only provide services in one state (or risk being shut out of using your trademark in that state). And that only covers the registrations. There may still be users out there who have used the name you want for many years. They would have what is called 'common-law' rights. You can only uncover these types of users via a comprehensive searching strategy with access to multiple paid commercial and goverment databases -- such as the trademark searching service provided by Thomson and other companies who do this professionally. A Google search will not be adequate because it will not turn up all the corporate name activity -- that information is not available on the internet for free.
I agree with the other information you've provided here: keep it short and memorable and make sure the domains are available (and make sure you register a domain at the time you search it...or a registrar will pick it up based on your search and it may become unavailable except at an auction price - for this reason you should not check domain availability at any of the providers like GoDaddy or Network Solutions.)
"Memorable" doesn't always result in a protectable trademark. You will have a far stronger brand if you pick something arbitrary and associate it with something for which there is no connection. For example:
"ARROW" for shirts
is much better than
"WORD WRITER" for word proccessing software. (This one was rejected for registration as being 'merely descriptive.')
I have articles about trademarks on my blog.
Carol Shepherd, Attorney
Arborlaw PLC