Intellectual property law
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A trade name, also known as a trading name or a business name, is the name which a business trades under for commercial purposes, although its registered, legal name, used for contracts and other formal situations, may be another.

Trade names are also used in retailing to make oddly named articles more appealing to customers, or to make it easier for customers to recognize a product with a technical or difficult to remember name. Trade names are informal, public domain terms, unlike trademarks. Pharmaceuticals have trade names (e.g. "Aspirin") which are often dissimilar to their chemical names ("acetylsalicylic acid").

Trade names may sometimes be registered as trademarks and be regarded as brands. Conversely, trademarks and brand names can slip into the public domain and be used less restrictively as more general trade names.

[edit] See also

• Doing business as

[edit] References

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