Field notes
How great brand names actually get made.
Case studies, methodologies, and unflinching takes from the team running the five-agency Brand Cleared pipeline. The mechanical parts of naming, made transparent.
Is My Business Name Taken? How to Actually Check (2026)
A business name can be free on every domain registrar and still be legally taken. Checking it properly means four separate systems that don't talk to each other — the domain (RDAP), the USPTO federal trademark register, your state's Secretary of State registry, and common-law use across the open web and social handles. Here's how to check each one, and the trap that catches most founders.
Read postHow to Do a Free USPTO Trademark Search (the Knockout Method)
The USPTO maintains the federal trademark register and a free public trademark search on uspto.gov. A knockout search means checking the exact name plus phonetic and spelling variants, scoped to your Nice classification class, against the likelihood-of-confusion standard. Here's how to run one — and why a clean free search isn't the same as clearance.
Read postHow to Name a Startup: A Practical 2026 Framework
Naming a startup starts with a positioning brief, not wordplay. This 2026 framework walks the spectrum of distinctiveness — why coined and arbitrary names like Kodak and Spotify are both more brandable and stronger trademarks than descriptive ones — plus the practical tests, why a taken .com is fine, and how to clear a finalist across all four systems: RDAP, USPTO, Secretary of State, and common-law.
Read postHow to Check Domain, Trademark, and Social Handle Availability at Once
There's no single "name availability checker" — availability lives in four systems that don't share data: the domain (RDAP), the USPTO federal trademark register, your state's Secretary of State registry, and common-law use across Google and social handles. Here's how to run all four efficiently, the order to check them in, and why "available everywhere I looked" still isn't legal clearance.
Read postCommon-Law Trademark Rights, Explained (Why an Unregistered Name Can Still Be Taken)
You don't need to register a trademark to have rights in a name — in the U.S., common-law trademark rights arise from actually using a name in commerce. But those rights are generally limited to the geographic area of use, ™ can be used without registration while ® requires a USPTO filing, and an unregistered name in real use can still block you under the likelihood-of-confusion standard. Here's how common-law rights work and why federal registration is still worth it.
Read postTrademark Classes (the Nice Classification), Explained for Founders
Trademark classes are the 45 categories of the Nice Classification — classes 1–34 for goods, classes 35–45 for services — used by the USPTO. Rights are granted per class, so the same name can belong to an airline and a faucet brand at once. Here's how to find your class, why it sets your search scope and filing fees, and the class mistake that catches most founders.
Read postWhy a Business Name Generator Isn't Enough (the Clearance Gap)
A business name generator produces ideas — but an idea that looks "available" can still be legally taken. Here's the clearance gap between a free AI name generator and a name that's actually clear to use, and how to close it.
Read postWe Named 10 Fake Companies With AI. Here Are the Results.
Ten briefs. Five AI agencies. About 10–15 minutes per brand. ~100 candidates, one winner each — Hush, Chalkline, Cardoso, Brief Engine, Pocketship, Flagstone, Live Jar, Cacao House, Studio Book, Steepbound. The full Brand Cleared pipeline, unedited.
Read postThe 5 Creative Methodologies Behind Brand Cleared
Every name in a Brand Cleared report comes from one of five distinct creative lenses — Lexicon Agency (phoneme-first), Igor Agency (provocative territories), Cultural Linguistics Agency (cross-cultural etymology), Consumer Moment Agency (experience-extracted), and Viral & Social Agency (shareability-optimized). Here's what each one does and why it matters.
Read postWhy $149 Beats a $50,000 Naming Agency
A naming agency from Lexicon Branding or Igor International takes 6 to 8 weeks and costs $15,000 to $50,000. Brand Cleared runs the same mechanical work — RDAP domain sweeps, USPTO federal knockout, brand-system scoring — in about 10 to 15 minutes for $149. Here's the line-by-line breakdown and the parts you still pay a trademark attorney for.
Read post