Found product with the same name but from another country before launch

We've invested time and money into advertising our product which we will be launching next month. We just discovered another product with the same name just launched in a European country.

Their product is a desktop application and ours is an enterprise solution. Should we/would you change the name of the product? Is this going to cause us a lot of headaches in the future?

Our first thought is to stick with the name of our product and hope to successfully trademark in the U.S.

Thanks.

With trademarks the primary concern will be whether there will be market confusion. Because of this the first thing you need to analyze is whether the two products are going after the same customers.

If both products are business solutions going after the same kind of customer then the name conflict may be a problem. If on the other hand one product is for business users and the other is for artist then it may never be a problem.

If you feel there will be a conflict you can try to you might be able to change the name slightly, add another word so you're using two words instead of one or use an acronym.

As with all things the sooner you figure out whether there is a real conflict and resolve it the cheaper it will be. You can always go the route of getting a trademark and trying to fight them but that is usually a pretty costly approach.

What is the European country? Have they trademarked their name already? If so, they might even go after you if you launch your product with the same name although legal procedures would be extremely long and expensive.

Depending on the countries involved in the dispute, their respective courts may be more inclined to recognize registered trademarks.

Secondly, you may also piggy back on the other company´s efforts by positioning your company next to the other one in Google searches so that when somebody searches for the other company, yours will also show up.

Good luck.