Classic "beginner" questions - trademark etc.

ShyJosh

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To make story short. After loosing last channel, I decided to give youtube one last chance. I still have my FB page with some fans. And I do like and enjoy making videos so ....

Anyway, to make story short, I had 2 previous identeties on youtube. My first one was just regular item name, and second one was 4 mixed words into one.

First name was just the name and color of item which everyone uses every day. So google had like millions of search resaults. But still my channel was very easy to find. I guess name was "copyrighted"/"trademarked", so I used it very very short. Let's name this one: "Blue Pencil".

Second name was mixed words into one. Like: "Amazing music" = "Amasic" and stuff like that. Google had like 0 search resaults. But my channel was very hard to find without YT promotion.

I'm thinking about choosing name as "Blue Pencil". I don't care for google search resaults. I did find trademark database, and there are companies with that name. So I guess it's "trademarked". But how can I find name which is not?

I have same problem with my nickname in real life. Let's say it's "Maxi". Everyone in my collage/high school/town knows me as "Maxi". Can I use this name without worrying about trademark stuff? Maxi also has trademarked names for car parts/clothes/pencils/other. How they can have multiple trademark applications if trademark is for unique names which "Maxi" isn't? Maxi is regular first male name.

If we all take this into one. Is it ok for me to have channel named "Blue Pencil 18" if just "Blue Pencil" is trademarked?

Tnx for explenations.

Josh.
 

Oliver Lesh

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I'm absolutely not an expert to these copyright and trademarking issues by no means, but I guess naming your channel 'bluepencil18' should be fine. For example if you'd name your channel 'Blue Pencil Videos', it might look like the company that owns the 'Blue Pencil' trademark is the creator of the videos you uploaded and therefore your channel could get closed really quickly again. But after adding numbers to that name it should be clear that you're someone else, because no company would add numbers to their channel's name for advertising reasons. Adding numbers to your username is not very good option in general because viewers might not remember it easily, but in this case it looks like you have no better option. Again, I might be wrong, it's just what I think about it...