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[melos]

so, my interwebs name is seagaia - the one i publish games with atm. this is totally an edge case and nothing I would have to worry about for a long, long time, if at all, but would it matter at all that 'seagaia' is also the name of a pretty big sea resort in japan? i mean it's not like the game and hospitality industries would really ever clash.

http://www.seagaia.co.jp/index_en.html

it's called "Phoenix Seagaia Resort" so I'm not really sure.

i'm 90% sure i'm just worrying too much, but hey.

[Hangedman]

Have an alternate business name in mind, but don't worry too much. On the off chance you get some noise, switch to the alternate.

I go by Hangedman but I use Hangedman Design for things because it's far less likely to cause conflicts.

[Christian Knudsen]

Like you said, it's two completely different industries, so there isn't much risk of brand confusion, which is what trademarks are supposed to protect against. Also, there aren't any registered "seagaia" trademarks within any industry at the USPTO, so I think you should be pretty safe using the name.

[burtonposey]

I second Christian's info. If it's not in the same segment of business, there's not much to worry about.

[mikejkelley]

I think you should be OK but you never know; a long time ago the Beatles (Apple Records) sued Apple for using an apple logo (the logos didn't look anything similar). The first ruling that came down said smthg like Apple could continue using its logo so long as the company stuck to computers and didn't venture into the music domain. Apple was all like, "fine! Why/how/under what circumstances would we EVER get involved w/ the music biz?!"

Fast fwd. to the iTunes era:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/05/AR2007020501387.html
"Jaffray estimates that Apple Inc. paid The Beatles $50 million to $100 million for the rights to the Apple name. That would come on top of more than $26.5 million Apple paid to settle past disputes with Apple Corps."