united-states california trademark corporate-law
Can I use a corporation name that has been &quot;Merged Out&quot; as my new corporation name in California?
<p>I did the search on California Secretary of State - Business Name site, and it shows the status as "Merged Out" (more than 20 years ago). I also searched the US Official Trademark Db site for the company name keyword, and none was found. I wonder it is ok for me to register the name or it would be better to suffix it with general/industry word (such as "Group", "Enterprise", "Foods", "Tech" ...)? </p>

<p>The simplest answer here is to just try it. In California, you can submit 3 or 4 names on your formation document, in order of priority. In my experience the SoS staff care most about the first two words in an entity name, so if its a longer entity name, and there is an issue with the merged out entity, then adding "Group" probably wouldn't solve the issue anyway.</p>
