1. What if I use a taken name for my game studio/website/company if I could go that far?

2. What if I use a taken name for my game (having the same name with a brand/company/... or with other game)?

I have googled and found a lot of brands using the same name. They just add a prefix or suffix to the name. Perhaps I just need to add "games" or "game studio" to the taken name.

You're opening yourself up to unnecessary risk. If you become super successful people will try and capitalize on you using their name. If there is any chance that your product or brand could be confused by an average consumer because they are in the same or similar industry then you'd be in big trouble.

My advice is to try and come up with s different name ?

Go to a laywer specialized in trademarks etc. They can often help you to check if a name is protected or is protectable at all. Using an already used name is not the best idea.

@PatrickPB

What if they are not

in the same or similar industry

?

What if they're just selling other stuff like food, clothes,... not games?

What if they're just selling other stuff like food, clothes,... not games?

A real lawyer can give you a real answer. A bunch of game development nerds on the Internet cannot.

You're trying to be a developer in a highly creative industry. Being creative with a company name is the absofreakinlutely easily thing you should be able to do.

Go to a laywer specialized in trademarks etc. They can often help you to check if a name is protected or is protectable at all. Using an already used name is not the best idea.

The only problem with that is you'd need to pay a lawyer a lot of money to run trademark searches in all of the countries you're looking to operate in. Many games are released internationally and it's not really necessary to pay a lawyer for trademarks.

If you come up with an original name and just start using it in a commercial product you own the trademark. You don't actually have to register anything, just start using it :)

Registering gives a better proof point about how long you've been using the trademark, but it's not a guarantee. If I'd been using the name Minecraft in a commercial product for 10 years before Notch, and had never registered it, I'd still be able to sue and win against him in a court of law, even if his lawyer did a trademark search and registered the mark.

@PatrickPB
What if they are not

in the same or similar industry

?
What if they're just selling other stuff like food, clothes,... not games?

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that they could still go after you. Let's take clothing for example, specifically Marc Ecko's line of clothing. For a long time he was just in the clothing business and then he decided to branch out in to video games with "Marc Ecko's getting up: contents under pressure". If you had a game called "Ecko: ages of eternity" that released 10 years after the clothing line and 1 year before Marc Ecko's video game, he could still come after you.

It really is just better to avoid names already taken. It will also make SEO and the general consumer experience much easier since they won't receive irrelevant results when looking for your game on Google.

What if they're just selling other stuff like food, clothes,... not games?

The other company's ability and desire to "go after you" is highly variable. The bigger you become, they more successful you are, that just makes it more likely your startup will become the target.

As an example, if you are just a single individual with an unvisited website running with a name like "Target Games" and a bullseye logo, chances are good Target Brands will not notice you nor care. But as you grow, and start to rise in the search engines, and your name starts to show up in search results next to Target's commercial store offerings, you can begin to count the days until you will be asked to sign to acknowledge receipt of a Cease and Desist letter.

As far as that goes, SeanMiddleditch answered it clearly:

You're trying to be a developer in a highly creative industry. Being creative with a company name is the absofreakinlutely easily thing you should be able to do.

Are you a creative person in a creative field, or not? Even if you are only slightly creative you can come up with unique and novel names. The pattern "Adjective Animal" (e.g. "Naughty Dog", "Red Ant", "Big Fish", "Buzz Monkey"...) was popular for several years, including spawning a company with that actual name "Adjective Animal".

Feeling particularly unoriginal? Visit a random word generator, keep picking random "adjective noun" pairs until you find words you love.

Careful.

Bethesda doesn't allow anyone to use "scrolls" in a name. You really need a lawyer for this.

And I echo the above sentiments - it's not hard to come up with a unique name.

It doesn't matter what field of business you are in. You can be sued for just having a similar sounding name. It doesn't even need to be the same name. A company that owns a trademark needs to actively go after anything that sounds similar otherwise they risk the weakening of their mark.

Usually the advice is to consult a lawyer but, in this case it isn't necessary if you were to create a company with the same name of another then you would have done something incredibly stupid.