Company name

Certain rules must be obeyed when looking for a suitable company name. A name and any additional elements (business or brand name, indication of the nature of the business) can only be registered as a company name if they are not misleading. Entrepreneurs or their legal representatives must also check the similarity with other trade names or signs, for example by searching the trade mark register, companies register, telephone books or the internet (domain name search).

The minimum statutory requirements for company names are:

• Partnerships
  • general partnership
  • limited partnership

• Corporations
  • private limited company
  • public limited company

We recommend seeking the opinion of the competent Austrian Federal Economic Chamber regarding the company name. Presenting this opinion when applying for registration in the companies register can speed up the registration process before the courts.

The forms for this must be requested from the competent economic chamber, completed and returned to it.

Further links

• Austrian Federal Economic Chamber (→ WKO)^{German text}
• Choosing a company name (→ WKO)^{German text}

Legal basis

Sections 17 to 21 of the Unternehmensgesetzbuch (UGB)