How do you register a business name in France, for future use?

[Abbaye]

Hi, we want to register a business name, for future use, ie. we dont want to start the business just yet but want to safeguard the name.  How do we do it please- we are in Ille et Vilaine, 35.

Thanks v much.

Abbaye

[LanguedocGal2]

Hi

Be very careful here. In my experience, if you register a business in France, then that business becomes an entity immediately and you start paying cotisations. Perhaps there is a way around this but I don’t know how that could be done. Your Chamber of Commerce should be able to advise you too.

If you are thinking of protecting the name, I would suggest the following but I stress that I’m not an expert. Experience based only.

1)      Reserve the domain names as .com, fr, co.uk or anything else you can think of, if you haven't already. It's cheap to do this.

2)      Contact: www.inpi.fr . This organisation deals with the protection of trademarks, copyright, intellectual property etc and there should be a local office near you.  Their protection covers France.

Also look at: http://www.euridile.com/weur2/init.ow?WRNCSRV2=0709440186324756 to see if the name of your company is already registered.

INPI should be able to advise you fully.

3)      If you want European protection, the office is in Alicante and Worldwide in Geneva.  If you need the Alicante and Geneva details, post again and I’ll find them. The information is available via INPI though.

 If you find a way to do this without incurring cotisations, please let us know