Business Name Registration in Australia Gives You Permission, Not Ownership

Register the name, because you have to. Then don’t mistake the registration for ownership, because it isn’t.

Search for business name registration Australia and most of what comes back explains how to sign up and pay. Very little of it tells you what you’ve bought once you have. The answer is permission to trade under a name, plus protection against one narrow thing: an identical or nearly identical business name. It isn’t exclusive rights, and it isn’t brand protection. This article sets out what the register covers in the government’s own words, where that cover stops, a ten-minute check to run before you print anything, and the fee that applies from 1 July 2026. It is general information, not legal advice, and it draws only on business.gov.au, ASIC and IP Australia. The register is a licence to trade, not a title deed.

What registration does, in the government’s own words

The word “registered” does a lot of damage here, because both registers use it. A registered business name means ASIC has recorded the name and you may trade under it. A registered trade mark means IP Australia has recorded exclusive rights to it. The two words look identical on a form and mean very different things.

Start with what you get, because it isn’t nothing. business.gov.au says it’s an offence to trade under an unregistered business name unless it’s the same as your own name. It adds that once you’re registered, you can use your business name Australia wide. ASIC says registering a business name protects you from another business using an identical or nearly identical name. That is a real benefit. It is also the whole of it.

Now the limits, which the same bodies state just as plainly. business.gov.au says: “Registering a business name doesn’t mean you have exclusive rights to use it.” ASIC says registration does not stop another business using a name with similar words, and does not protect you against legal action if you use someone else’s trade mark. ASIC’s Information Sheet 187, issued in July 2019, goes a step further. It says there is no exclusive right to the name “or any part of the name”, no protection of a name or a brand “like a trademark”, and that a trade mark holder can still act.

Put those lines together and the shape is plain. The register stops a copy of your name. It doesn’t stop a lookalike, and it doesn’t stop a trade mark owner. Three government bodies describe it the same way, so there’s very little room to argue. What a trade mark adds, on business.gov.au’s account, is exclusive trading, branding or ownership rights over your business name, and a business name entry cannot do that job however carefully you fill in the form.

A name on one register, rights on another

Two registers do two different jobs. ASIC runs the business names register. IP Australia runs the trade marks register. The table sets out what each gives, what it doesn’t, and who says so.

There’s a catch that makes this easy to misread. business.gov.au says you can’t register a business name that someone else has registered as a business name or trade mark. That sounds like a safety net, and it’s worth having. But ASIC says its own review process, the one that looks at a registration decision, only asks whether ASIC followed the Business Names Registration Act 2011. Trade marks, passing off and competition matters sit outside that review. So the register’s checks are not a ruling on who owns a brand.

A domain name is a third thing again. IP Australia says a domain name doesn’t protect your business name. A business that holds the registered name and the matching web address has two useful things and still hasn’t got exclusive rights. The rights that do come with a trade mark are set out in section 20 of the Trade Marks Act 1995 (Cth), the section on rights given by registration of a trade mark.

The ten-minute test before you print anything

Here’s the test. Do it before you pay for signs, packaging, uniforms or a website, because that’s when a wrong answer costs the least.

Question one: is the name already a trade mark? business.gov.au points to IP Australia’s TM Checker for this. Search your exact name, then the obvious variations. ASIC is clear that a registered business name does not protect you against legal action if you use someone else’s trade mark, so this is the question with the sharpest edge.

Question two: is a similar name already out there? ASIC says the register doesn’t stop similar words appearing in another business’s name, so a clear register proves less than it feels like. Search the business names register, then search the way a customer would, and look at what turns up beside it.

Question three: would losing the name hurt? Picture the name on your products, your signage and your website. If changing it later would cost you customers or money, a trade mark is the thing that carries exclusive rights, and ASIC recommends legal advice when a name dispute arises. ASIC also says that to protect your business or company name, you can consider registering a trade mark yourself. Keep a note of the date and what you searched for. A dated record of a clean search is cheap to make and awkward to reconstruct later.

Take a hypothetical case. Say a one-person furniture maker plans to put a new trading name on stools, a van and a website. Questions one and two come back clean, and question three comes back with a firm yes. The register entry is still worth having, because trading under an unregistered name is an offence unless it’s your own name. But the maker should treat it as step one, and ask about a trade mark before the name is on anything permanent.

What would change the verdict? A yes to question one means stop and take advice before going further. A no to all three, and you can reasonably stay at the register for now.

What ASIC can and cannot do in a dispute

Many owners assume that if someone copies a registered name, ASIC will sort it out. ASIC’s Information Sheet 187, Disputes about similar business names, says something more careful. ASIC says it “may not always be able to help”. Its review looks only at whether it followed the Business Names Registration Act 2011 when it made its decision. It doesn’t take in passing off, competition law or trade marks.

Those matters go elsewhere. The sheet points to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) for passing off and misleading conduct, and to IP Australia for trade marks. For legal advice, it points to the Law Society of your state or territory.

That routing gives a practical order. If the worry is that customers are being misled by a lookalike, the sheet points to the ACCC. If the worry is a trade mark, it points to IP Australia. If the worry is where you stand, it points to a lawyer. In practice that means a business name registration is a record of permission to trade, not a remedy against a lookalike. If a dispute does arise, ASIC says to get legal advice, and a lawyer is the right person to tell you where you stand. This article can’t.

What it costs, and the date that matters

The cost question gets a straight answer here. From 1 July 2026 the fee is $47 for one year and $108 for three years. Before that date it was $45 and $104. business.gov.au, in a news item published on 9 June 2026, says the change is in line with the March-quarter Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Fees move with the CPI, so check the current figure on business.gov.au when you register or renew, rather than trusting any number in an article, this one included. Diarise the renewal date as well. It comes round every year or every three years, depending on which term you chose.

No trade mark fee appears here. IP Australia sets it, and IP Australia’s own site is the place to read it.

The fair case for stopping at the register

There is a fair case for stopping at the register, and it deserves a straight hearing. For a small local trader, the register entry plus honest use of the name may be enough in practice. A trade mark is a commitment as well as a protection. IP Australia says registration lasts up to 10 years and can be renewed indefinitely, which means you’re signing up to look after it, and it has costs of its own that IP Australia publishes.

A business that never trades beyond one suburb, never puts the name on goods and never sells online might reasonably decide not to carry that. Registering the name still blocks an identical or nearly identical business name, and that is not nothing.

Say a one-person mowing service works two suburbs, uses the owner’s van and puts a business name on its invoices. Bookings come by phone. That business has little riding on the name beyond its local reputation, and the register entry does the job it was built for. Now say the same business starts selling branded gear online. The name is on goods, it travels, and the answer to question three is no longer the same.

Here’s what would change the verdict. Selling beyond your local area changes it. Selling online changes it. Putting the name on goods changes it. Any of those raises the cost of losing the name, and at that point the question stops being whether a trade mark is a commitment and becomes whether you can afford to be without exclusive rights.

Register, Check, Then Decide

Register the name because the law expects it, check the trade mark register and the business names register before you spend money on anything with the name on it, and then decide whether the exclusive rights that only a trade mark carries are worth the commitment for the way you trade, so that the registration does the job it was built for and nobody expects more from it. This is general information only. A dispute over a name is a matter for a lawyer.

Sources: business.gov.au, Register a business name (https://business.gov.au/registrations/register-a-business-name); business.gov.au, Business names, trading names and legal names (https://business.gov.au/planning/new-businesses/business-names-trading-names-and-legal-names); business.gov.au, Changes for businesses from 1 July 2026, published 9 June 2026 (https://business.gov.au/news/changes-for-businesses-from-1-july-2026); ASIC, Register a business name (https://www.asic.gov.au/for-business-and-companies/business-names/register-a-business-name); ASIC, Disputes about similar business names, Information Sheet 187, July 2019 (https://asic.gov.au/about-asic/contact-us/how-to-complain/disputes-about-similar-business-names/); IP Australia, Understanding trade marks (https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/trade-marks/understanding-trade-marks)