Would be good to know how others here handle that thing. Do all of you have a company name for putting up your stuff on xblig or steam?
I am not worried about paying taxes right now. I will have to consider that when the game generates a sufficient amount of money.
Again, I'm in the states and can only speak to my own experience here. I would recommend though that you consider your taxes now. Anything you approach after the fact can include fines where taxes are concerned and other kinds of legal issues. That's all I'll say about that.
Trademarks (in the U.S.): There are 2 kinds of trademarks -
"(TM)" and "®" (in case that character is too small to read, it's an R with a circle around it).
You can use "(TM)" without restriction anywhere your company name or logo is displayed. It does not offer you any federal protection though. It's just a declaration on your part of what your brand is.
"®" is a federally registered trademark which you have to register with the USTPO. There are restrictions on what the USTPO will trademark. You cannot trademark your company name, but you can trademark your company logo (the rules changed recently). Furthermore,
you will have to show your trademark "in commercial use". The rules for "in commercial use" are posted on the USTPO web site, but basically it comes down to having it displayed on a product your are currently selling. Most often for goods (like dinner plates for example) it could be as simple as showing a photo of the trademark somewhere on the product.
Since we are selling our product through digital distribution it's a bit trickier.
Your web site will not suffice for showing the trademark in commerce use. We got ours by showing our trademark logo on a box shot of our product being sold on Desura.
There are 2 types of USTPO registration: "intent to use" and "in commercial use". You can register "intent to use" any time without restriction if your product is still in development, but you have to pay an annual fee to keep that "intent to use" registration until you can demonstrate "in commercial use" to the satisfaction of the USTPO attorneys.
Aside from trademarking our brand as "in commercial use" (which took years since we hadn't completed our first product yet),
we also registered our studio name as a D.B.A. (doing business as) since our corporate name is not the same as our (now trademarked) studio name. This allows us to do business using our studio name as well as our corporate name.
How all this works in the E.U., I have no idea but it could be similar. And yes, it's a pain but it's also important to protect your business and yourself from predators. It's wise to have an LLC or subchapter S corporation as it protects you personally from legal actions and bankruptcy obligations should those things arise.
Developer
