Real Estate Branding Checklist: Name Clearance, Naming Rights Terms, Signage and Renderings, Association Marks, and Transfer on Sale

By Casey Scott McKay · 2024-05-07

This checklist runs a property brand from the naming meeting to the disposal, in the order that keeps each decision cheap. Phase one asks the four questions that determine whether the name is meant to be a mark at all, and records the answers. Phase two clears against the right services and plans for the geographic descriptiveness refusal that catches most development names. The middle phases cover naming rights agreements drafted as trademark licences, hospitality flags and their de-flagging provisions, community association licences placed in the governing documents at formation, and the lease provisions covering tenant name use and signage rights. The closing phases address architectural work and rendering licences, the digital estate that assembles itself without the owner, the asset schedule that decides who keeps the name on sale, and rebrand sequencing.

IP and Technology > Trademarks | Checklist | Published 7 May 2024 - Updated 28 March 2026 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us

Summary. This checklist runs a property brand from the naming meeting to the disposal, in the order that keeps each decision cheap. Phase one asks the four questions that determine whether the name is meant to be a mark at all, and records the answers. Phase two clears against the right services and plans for the geographic descriptiveness refusal that catches most development names. The middle phases cover naming rights agreements drafted as trademark licences, hospitality flags and their de-flagging provisions, community association licences placed in the governing documents at formation, and the lease provisions covering tenant name use and signage rights. The closing phases address architectural work and rendering licences, the digital estate that assembles itself without the owner, the asset schedule that decides who keeps the name on sale, and rebrand sequencing.

Keywords: property branding checklist · naming brief questions · service mark clearance · geographic descriptiveness · supplemental register · filing before reveal · naming rights terms · morals triggers · flag agreements · de-flagging inventory · association licence at formation · lease brand provisions · signage rights · architectural and rendering licences · building photography · digital estate control · asset schedule · assignment with goodwill · rebrand sequencing · portfolio register

How to use this checklist

| Field | Detail | |---|---| | Who runs it | Counsel with development, marketing, leasing, asset management, and the transaction team | | When | At the naming meeting; before the reveal; at lease and sponsorship negotiation; before disposal | | Time required | A day at naming; two weeks for clearance; recurring at each gate | | Gates | Four naming questions answered; filings made before reveal; name on the asset schedule | | Output | A one-page brand note, a filings record, executed licences, and a portfolio register | | Companion documents | Branding a Real Estate Development and Naming a Building |

The matter. A developer is completing a mixed-use scheme with a residential tower, a retail podium, and a hotel, marketed under a name drawn from the neighbourhood. The name has been used in planning documents for three years and nothing has been filed. A bank has agreed a fifteen-year naming rights deal for the office component. The hotel will operate under an international flag. The residential component will be governed by an association. The renderings were produced by a visualisation studio on a purchase order. The domain is held by the marketing agency and the social accounts are in a leasing agent's name. The developer intends to reuse the naming convention on three further schemes and to sell the retail podium within two years.

Phase 1. Answer the four questions

[ ] What is the name for? Leasing differentiation, sales premium, civic identity, sponsor revenue, or simply an address. Why. If the answer is the last, most of this checklist is unnecessary. Trap. Spending on a brand for a single-tenant industrial building.
[ ] Who owns it? The legal entity, and whether it is the same entity that owns the property. Why. In many structures the brand sits in an affiliate and the property in a project entity. Trap. An assumption that ownership follows the land.
[ ] Who may use it, and for how long? Association, tenants, sponsors, operators, brokers. Why. A name used by an association for fifty years is a different asset from one used by an owner for five. Trap. A licence structure retrofitted after a decade of use.
[ ] What happens on sale? Transfer, licence, retention, or coexistence. Why. It is the question nobody asks at naming and everybody argues about at disposal. Trap. Deferring it as premature.
[ ] [Gate] Record the answers in a one-page brand note and attach it to the property file. Trap. A note held in the legal file that the asset manager never sees.

Phase 2. Clear and file

[ ] Clear against the services, not the property type. Real estate services, shopping centre services, residential community services, hospitality services. Trap. A search run against goods classes.
[ ] Search regional common law use. Why. Property names are frequently unregistered and heavily used within a metropolitan area, and that is what a new development collides with. Trap. A register-only search.
[ ] Check domains and handles at the same time. Trap. A cleared name whose digital presence is unavailable.
[ ] Expect a geographic descriptiveness refusal under 15 U.S.C. § 1052(e). Why. Development names come from the neighbourhood, street, river, or hill. Trap. Treating the refusal as a failure rather than as the expected first step.
[ ] Plan the acquired distinctiveness route under 15 U.S.C. § 1052(f), using the supplemental register in the interim. Trap. Abandoning the name on a first refusal.
[ ] Anticipate surname refusals where the name is a developer family name. Trap. No evidence file for distinctiveness.
[ ] [Gate] File before the reveal. Why. Planning applications, community consultations, contractor procurement, and broker briefings leak the name long before the campaign. Trap. Filing after the launch announcement.

Phase 3. Naming rights

[ ] Draft it as a trademark licence running both ways. Why. The venue licenses the right to be named; the sponsor licenses its mark. Trap. A sponsorship template with no trademark provisions.
[ ] Set the term against the sponsor's likely lifespan. Trap. A thirty-year term with no exit.
[ ] Address insolvency expressly. Why. Mission Product Holdings v. Tempnology treats rejection of a trademark licence as a breach rather than a rescission, preserving the licensee's use — which here may be the opposite of what the venue wants. Trap. Assuming bankruptcy removes the name.
[ ] Write objective morals triggers and a defined removal process. Trap. "Reputational harm" as the standard.
[ ] Deal with change of control. Substitution of a successor's name, the right to refuse, and the fee consequence. Trap. Silence, in a deal that will outlast the sponsor's current ownership.
[ ] Allocate removal cost and set a timetable. Signage, wayfinding, digital assets, transit references, public habit. Trap. A removal obligation with no cost allocation.
[ ] Map sub-naming conflicts. Venue, concourse, field, and gate naming produce overlapping obligations. Trap. A second sponsorship that contradicts the first.
[ ] Note the public infrastructure references the venue cannot change unilaterally. Trap. A contractual removal deadline that depends on a transit authority.

Phase 4. Flags and branded residences

[ ] Read the de-flagging provisions first. Notice, cure, signage removal, materials disposal, guest data. Why. A property that loses its flag loses its reservation flow overnight. Trap. Negotiating the fee and skipping the exit.
[ ] Understand the capital expenditure obligations flowing from brand standards. Why. They are the largest financial term in most flag agreements. Trap. Standards treated as operational guidance.
[ ] Negotiate area of protection and radius restrictions. Trap. A competing property placed nearby by the same licensor.
[ ] Treat branded residences as a long-tail licence with hundreds of owners who never signed it and an association that will use the brand for decades. Trap. Residential branding papered as a marketing arrangement.
[ ] Address the loyalty programme separately. Guest data, points liability, channel access. Trap. Guest data treated as the operator's.
[ ] Exercise quality control and record it. Why. Hospitality is one of the few sectors where it is genuinely audited. Trap. Audit rights never used.

Phase 5. Association naming

[ ] Put the licence into the governing documents at formation. Trap. A negotiation with an association that has used the name for a decade.
[ ] Define the scope. Association services, community identification, signage, communications, with commercial exploitation excluded unless intended. Trap. Merchandise and sponsorship activity the developer never contemplated.
[ ] Retain developer rights expressly for its own development activities in defined territories and future phases. Trap. A grant that prevents reuse of a naming convention.
[ ] Address monuments and entry features. Why. They carry the name and are frequently owned by the association while the mark is not. Trap. An association that owns the sign and not the right to what it says.
[ ] Include and exercise quality control. Why. A licence without it invites a naked licensing argument. Trap. Quality control recited and never applied.
[ ] State what happens on developer exit. Assignment, continuing licence, or reversion, with a defined trigger. Trap. Silence at the moment the developer leaves.

Phase 6. Lease provisions

[ ] Permit tenant use for identification and directions, with quality control and a prohibition on suggesting affiliation beyond tenancy. Trap. Tenant use that is customary and undocumented.
[ ] Obtain reciprocal permission to use tenant marks in directories, websites, and campaigns. Trap. A directory that infringes forty tenants' marks.
[ ] Negotiate signage rights with the naming rights position in view. Why. An exclusive signage right granted casually can prevent a sponsorship worth considerably more. Trap. Signage handled by the leasing team alone.
[ ] Address anchor naming and its removal on departure. Trap. An anchor's name in the centre's own name.
[ ] Include a post-termination wind-down for tenant use. Trap. A departed tenant still listing the centre address.
[ ] Consider centre trade dress — architecture, layout, signage system, landscaping — under Two Pesos v. Taco Cabana, with secondary meaning under Wal-Mart Stores v. Samara Brothers and functionality under TrafFix Devices v. Marketing Displays. Trap. A trade dress claim over an ordinary commercial building.

Phase 7. Imagery

[ ] License the architectural work. Why. Architectural works and technical drawings are protected under 17 U.S.C. § 102 and the architect holds rights the developer needs. Trap. A construction contract silent on marketing use.
[ ] Own the renderings. Why. Visualisation work is a work made for hire only within the enumerated categories in 17 U.S.C. § 101 with a signed writing; otherwise a present-tense assignment is required under 17 U.S.C. § 204. Trap. A purchase order.
[ ] Take a perpetual archival licence where ownership is not obtainable. Why. Renderings persist in listings, press coverage, and archives long after the campaign. Trap. A term licence for images that will circulate forever.
[ ] Understand the photography position. Why. 17 U.S.C. § 120 permits pictorial representations of a building located in or ordinarily visible from a public place. Trap. Attempting to control exterior photography.
[ ] Treat interiors differently, since the limitation does not reach them. Trap. Interior photography licensed on the same terms as exterior.
[ ] Address brokerage photography. Why. A brokerage commissioning images may own them, and a subsequent listing cannot simply reuse them. Trap. Images reused across successive listing agents.
[ ] Handle public art under 17 U.S.C. § 106A and, where incorporated into the building, 17 U.S.C. § 113. Trap. A renovation that removes an integrated artwork without notice.

Phase 8. Digital estate

[ ] Register domains in the owner's name, with the registrar account controlled centrally. Trap. A domain held by a marketing agency.
[ ] Take social accounts out of individuals' names. Trap. Accounts recovered from a departed leasing agent.
[ ] Claim and verify listing and review profiles early. Why. Platforms create profiles automatically from public data. Trap. An unclaimed profile carrying the platform's own description.
[ ] Monitor map entries, which are how most people find the property and which are publicly editable in several systems. Trap. A wrong name on a mapping service persisting for years.
[ ] Accept that tenant and resident content is not controllable and that enforcement against reviews and community groups is counterproductive. Trap. A takedown campaign against residents.
[ ] Schedule the digital assets separately in every transaction. Trap. Omission from the asset list, which is routine.

Phase 9. Transfer and rebrand

[ ] Put the name on the asset schedule with a deliberate choice among transfer, licence for a period, retention with buyer rebranding, and coexistence. Trap. A schedule listing fixtures and omitting the name the property has been marketed under for a decade.
[ ] Assign with goodwill or not at all. Why. 15 U.S.C. § 1060 requires the goodwill of the business symbolised by the mark, and an assignment in gross is invalid. Trap. A bare assignment of the registration.
[ ] Price the rebranding where the name is retained. Signage, wayfinding, digital presence, tenant materials, market habit. Trap. An unbudgeted cost discovered post-closing.
[ ] Address continuing use. What the buyer may do about signage, correspondence, and the address. Trap. A retained mark and a building everyone still calls by that name.
[ ] Check the security position where a lender is involved, since marks are frequently held by an affiliate. Trap. A lender taking the project entity and acquiring a licence rather than a mark.
[ ] Sequence a rebrand. File, acquire the domain, and register handles before the reveal; audit contractual constraints from sponsors, flags, anchors, and donors; maintain the old registrations through the transition against abandonment under 15 U.S.C. § 1127; and build the physical and third-party reference inventory. Trap. An announcement that precedes the filings.
[ ] Maintain the portfolio register. Property, name, registration status, services, licences, association arrangements, digital assets, disposal treatment. Trap. A register that stops at registrations.

Phase 10. Working the example matter

[ ] File this week, before completion. Why. The name has been in planning documents for three years, which means it is public, findable, and available to a squatter — and a first-to-file competitor in an adjacent market is a live risk. Trap. Waiting for the marketing launch, which is the moment the name becomes valuable to somebody else.
[ ] Accept the descriptiveness position and plan for it. Why. A name drawn from the neighbourhood will draw a refusal under 15 U.S.C. § 1052(e). Three years of use in planning documents is not trademark use, but use since marketing began counts toward the five years for 15 U.S.C. § 1052(f). Trap. Abandoning the name after the first office action.
[ ] File in the four service categories separately. Real estate development and leasing, shopping centre services, residential community services, and hospitality services. Why. The scheme spans all four and a single filing covers none of them properly. Trap. One application described generically.
[ ] Restructure the naming rights deal before signing. Why. Fifteen years, a bank, a name on a tower in a city centre. The agreement needs objective morals triggers, change of control provisions covering a bank merger, insolvency treatment, and an allocated removal cost with a timetable that accounts for transit and municipal wayfinding. Trap. A sponsorship template with a fee schedule.
[ ] Read the flag agreement's de-flagging provisions before the fee. Why. The hotel's value depends on the reservation flow, and the exit terms determine what happens if the relationship ends. Trap. Negotiating brand standards and skipping termination.
[ ] Put the association licence into the governing documents now. Why. The residential component's association will use the name for decades, and the developer intends to reuse the naming convention. Both positions have to be written while the developer still controls the documents. Trap. Formation documents drafted by property counsel with no brand provision.
[ ] Fix the rendering position retrospectively. Why. A visualisation studio engaged on a purchase order owns the renderings. Obtain a confirmatory assignment or, failing that, a perpetual archival licence — while the relationship is current. Trap. Discovering it when a buyer asks for the marketing assets.
[ ] Recover the domain and the social accounts. Why. A domain held by an agency and accounts in a leasing agent's name are both recoverable now and both problematic later. Trap. Leaving them until the agency relationship or the employment ends.
[ ] Decide the retail podium disposal position today. Why. A sale within two years, under a name shared with a residential tower, a hotel, and a naming convention the developer wants to reuse, requires a coexistence or licence structure rather than a transfer. Trap. Reaching the sale with no position and negotiating it under time pressure.
[ ] [Gate] Write the one-page brand note and circulate it to development, marketing, leasing, the hotel team, and the transaction team. Why. Six documents are being drafted by six teams and they need the same four facts. Trap. Six inconsistent answers.

Phase 11. Portfolio strategy

[ ] Choose a naming convention deliberately. Why. A consistent element across properties builds a family of marks whose collective strength exceeds any individual name. Trap. Ad hoc naming that produces twenty unrelated assets.
[ ] Decide the house brand position. Whether the developer's name appears alongside each property name, and how prominently. Why. It determines whether goodwill accrues to the developer or only to the asset. Trap. A developer with a strong reputation and no visible connection to its projects.
[ ] Map names to disposal treatment in advance. Which are portfolio assets and which are asset-specific. Trap. A convention eroded one sale at a time.
[ ] Maintain a portfolio register. Property, name, registration status, services, licences granted, association arrangements, digital assets, disposal treatment. Trap. A docket that records filings and nothing else.
[ ] Prune deliberately. Why. Registrations for cancelled or sold projects accumulate, and abandonment under 15 U.S.C. § 1127 follows non-use with no intent to resume. Trap. Maintaining everything by default.
[ ] Watch competitor filings in the markets where the developer operates. Why. Property names are recycled and a similar name in the same city is a live risk. Trap. No watching service on the convention element.
[ ] Budget the portfolio, not the project. Trap. Per-project spending that produces inconsistent coverage.

Phase 12. Property types

[ ] Do not brand single-tenant industrial. Why. The occupier's brand matters, the building is an address, and the exercise produces cost without return. Trap. A naming programme applied uniformly across an asset class.
[ ] Brand multi-tenant office where the market is competitive. Trap. A name adopted without leasing input.
[ ] Licence build-to-suit naming. Why. A property named after an occupier displays somebody else's mark, and removal arises on departure. Trap. An occupier name used with no licence and no removal provision.
[ ] Treat campus and life science developments as mixed use, with multiple occupiers, shared amenities, and an operator providing services. Trap. A single mark used across uses with no licence structure.
[ ] Review signage rights and naming rights together at every lease negotiation. Why. An exclusive signage right can prevent a sponsorship worth considerably more. Trap. Signage granted by the leasing team in isolation.

Phase 13. Insolvency and lender position

[ ] Establish where the mark sits. Why. In many structures a brand company licenses the name to project entities, so a lender taking the project entity takes a licence rather than a mark. Trap. A security package that assumes the borrower owns the brand.
[ ] Take security over the mark where the property's value depends on it. Trap. Real property security with no intellectual property component.
[ ] Confirm the licence chain and its insolvency terms. Why. A licence terminating on insolvency leaves a receiver operating a property whose name it may not use. Trap. A termination-on-insolvency clause nobody read.
[ ] Note that Mission Product Holdings v. Tempnology assists a licensee, treating rejection as a breach rather than a rescission. Trap. Advice based on the pre-2019 position.
[ ] Anticipate the quality control problem. A licensor in bankruptcy remains obliged to exercise control it may not be capable of exercising. Trap. A licence that survives with nobody performing it.
[ ] Inventory brand assets immediately on appointment. Registrations, domains, listing profiles, social accounts, signage. Why. They disperse quickly when the operating team leaves. Trap. A receiver focused on the physical asset.
[ ] Address the flag urgently for hospitality assets. Trap. A de-flagging that removes the reservation flow supporting the valuation.

Phase 14. Municipal, civic, and donor naming

[ ] Distinguish designation from mark. Why. Municipal naming of a park, street, or facility is a governmental act producing a designation rather than a mark. Trap. A trademark strategy applied to a public naming process.
[ ] Include removal provisions in donor recognition agreements. Why. Naming is frequently perpetual in the donor's expectation and increasingly subject to removal when reputations change. Trap. A perpetual naming commitment with no exit.
[ ] Map the public infrastructure references. Transit, wayfinding, mapping, and municipal signage, each controlled by parties with no relationship to the owner. Trap. A contractual removal deadline the owner cannot meet.
[ ] Check historic designations that may constrain signage entirely. Trap. A naming rights display obligation a planning consent prohibits.
[ ] Handle public art under 17 U.S.C. § 106A and 17 U.S.C. § 113. Trap. An integrated artwork removed during a repositioning without notice.

Phase 15. Enforcement

[ ] Assess the competing development claim realistically. Why. Geographically derived marks are weak, and a defendant with a plausible independent derivation is a difficult target. Trap. Litigation over a descriptive name.
[ ] Handle post-sale use by letter and wind-down. Why. The asset schedule should have prevented it, and the remedy is usually a transition period rather than a claim. Trap. Escalation over a foreseeable ambiguity.
[ ] Address association overreach against the licence. Trap. No licence to enforce.
[ ] Inventory branded materials on de-flagging. Why. Artefacts persist for years and each is a continuing use. Trap. Signage removed and collateral forgotten.
[ ] Claim and correct listing profiles rather than litigating them. Trap. A platform dispute over a profile the owner never claimed.
[ ] Do not pursue exterior photography. Why. 17 U.S.C. § 120 generally permits it. Trap. A demand letter that generates coverage.
[ ] Use the lease provision against tenant overreach. Trap. No provision, and a tenant suggesting affiliation.

Phase 16. Rebrand execution

[ ] File, acquire the domain, and register handles before the reveal. Why. A rebrand announcement is the clearest possible signal to a squatter. Trap. A press release before the applications.
[ ] Audit contractual constraints first. Naming rights, flags, anchor naming, donor recognition. Why. Each may give a third party a contractual right to the existing name. Trap. A rebrand that breaches a live sponsorship.
[ ] Maintain the old registrations through the transition. Why. Non-use with no intent to resume is abandonment under 15 U.S.C. § 1127, and a lapse lets a third party adopt a name the market still associates with the property. Trap. Immediate abandonment on the reveal.
[ ] Build the physical inventory. Exterior signage, monuments, wayfinding, lift lobbies, stationery, tenant materials, uniforms, vehicles, and anything moulded, etched, or embedded. Trap. An inventory that stops at the main sign.
[ ] Map the third-party references. Transit, municipal wayfinding, mapping, listings, directories, press archives. Trap. Assuming they will update themselves.
[ ] Plan for the lag. Why. Practical completion trails legal completion by years. Trap. A communications plan assuming the old name disappears on launch.
[ ] Engage architectural and public art questions where renovation accompanies the rebrand. Trap. Demolition before the notice obligations are considered.

Phase 17. Governance

[ ] Name an owner across development, marketing, leasing, asset management, and legal. Trap. Shared responsibility.
[ ] Gate four moments. Name adoption; naming rights or flag signature; market release; disposal completion. Trap. Gates the programme manager can waive.
[ ] Keep three registers. Marks and status; licences granted including associations, tenants, and sponsors; digital assets by property. Trap. Registers held by different functions with no shared identifiers.
[ ] Report three measures. Properties with a cleared and filed name; licences with quality control actually exercised; disposals where the name position was on the asset schedule. Trap. Reporting filings made.
[ ] Standardise the paragraphs. Development agreement, governing documents, lease, naming rights agreement, flag agreement, purchase agreement. Why. Each needs one provision, drafted once and reused. Trap. Six teams drafting six answers.
[ ] Review annually. New properties, new markets, pruning, competitor filings, and the digital estate. Trap. A review that checks the register exists.

Phase 18. The naming brief

[ ] Ask for a shortlist rather than a recommendation. Why. The failure mode is a single candidate presented, approved, and then refused. Trap. Falling in love with an unavailable name.
[ ] Require a distinctive element. Why. Names built entirely from location, direction, and generic property words are unprotectable and indistinguishable from competitors. Trap. A brief that asks for a name evoking the location.
[ ] State the constraints early. Markets, languages, domain and handle requirements, portfolio convention. Trap. Constraints introduced after the presentation.
[ ] Run knockout searches on the shortlist before the meeting. Why. The meeting should select from cleared options. Trap. Clearance run after selection.
[ ] Explain the descriptiveness problem commercially. A name every competitor can also use is not a differentiator. Why. Marketing accepts that argument readily and lawyers usually fail to make it. Trap. A legal objection framed legally.
[ ] Engage the signage designer after selection. Trap. Design work on an uncleared name.
[ ] Record the rationale. Why the name was selected, the clearance position, and the fallback. Trap. No record when a conflict emerges three years later.

Phase 19. International

[ ] File early in first-to-file markets. Why. Squatting on announced development names is a known practice. Trap. A hospitality or residential brand entering a market after the announcement.
[ ] Expect divergent descriptiveness treatment. A name refused at home may register abroad and vice versa. Trap. A single global assessment.
[ ] Check service mark practice and classification in each target market, which vary for property services. Trap. A domestic specification translated.
[ ] Plan for transliteration and local-language naming. Why. A development marketed internationally acquires a local name whether or not the owner chooses one. Trap. A local name coined by a distributor or the press.
[ ] Verify the local registration and licensee rights under a hospitality flag's global master agreement. Trap. Assuming the global brand is registered locally.
[ ] Check cross-border marketing disclosure requirements, which travel in the same materials as the brand. Trap. Brand materials that omit mandated buyer protections.

Phase 20. Documents this checklist should produce

[ ] A one-page brand note answering the four questions, held with the property file. Trap. A note in the legal file nobody consults.
[ ] A filings record covering applications, services, distinctiveness position, and renewal dates. Trap. A docket with no service mapping.
[ ] Executed licences for associations, tenants, sponsors, and operators, with quality control provisions actually exercised. Trap. Licences signed and never reviewed.
[ ] An imagery file with architectural and rendering licences and their scope. Trap. Marketing assets with no rights record.
[ ] A digital estate record listing domains, handles, listing profiles, and controlling accounts. Trap. Assets held by agencies and individuals.
[ ] A portfolio register covering every property with its name, status, licences, and disposal treatment. Trap. A register that stops at registrations.

Phase 21. Trade dress in the built environment

[ ] Assess whether the property carries protectable trade dress at all. Why. Two Pesos v. Taco Cabana permits protection for a place of business, but the exterior form of a building is closer to product design and requires secondary meaning under Wal-Mart Stores v. Samara Brothers. Trap. An assertion with no evidence file.
[ ] Apply the functionality limit honestly. Why. TrafFix Devices v. Marketing Displays excludes features essential to use or affecting cost or quality, which reaches structure, circulation, and most operational logic. Trap. A claim that invites a ruling removing whatever protection existed.
[ ] Consider the signage system rather than the building. Why. Wayfinding and signage are ornamental, replicate across properties, and supply both distinctiveness and evidence. Trap. Effort concentrated on the architecture.
[ ] Build the evidence file for a portfolio prototype. A store format, lobby configuration, or room design replicated across locations. Trap. Evidence assembled during litigation.
[ ] Consider a colour mark under Qualitex v. Jacobson Products where a signature colour is used consistently. Trap. Colour asserted without secondary meaning evidence.

Phase 22. Proportion and sequencing

[ ] Do the four questions and the one-page note regardless of scale. Why. They cost an hour and prevent most of what goes wrong. Trap. Skipping them for a small asset, which is how a portfolio accumulates undocumented names.
[ ] Scale the remainder by expected life. A single-tenant industrial building needs an address and a lease provision; a master-planned community needs the full architecture because the name will be in use for fifty years by people who never read a contract. Trap. One process applied to both.
[ ] Fix the forward position before the historic one. New properties get the full treatment; existing ones are remediated in order of disposal likelihood. Trap. A portfolio audit that delays the process change.
[ ] Assign owners and dates to every open item. Trap. A report circulated for information.

Phase 23. Two closing tests

[ ] The schedule test. Open the last completed property sale and look for the name on the asset schedule. Why. If it is not there, nobody decided who kept it, and the answer will emerge when one of the parties acts on its assumption. Trap. Assuming a general assignment of intangibles covers a mark, which 15 U.S.C. § 1060 does not permit without the goodwill.
[ ] The association test. Open the governing documents of the most recently formed community association and look for the name licence. Why. If it is not there, the association is using a mark on no stated basis and the developer's reuse position is unprotected. Trap. A finding treated as historic rather than as a live remediation item.
[ ] A third, for the digital estate. Ask who controls the domain registrar account for the flagship property. Why. The answer is frequently an agency or a former employee, and it is recoverable now and difficult later. Trap. An answer nobody in the room can give.

[ ] And one for the pipeline. Add the four naming questions to the standing development checklist, so the next scheme answers them without anyone having to remember to ask. Why. Every failure in this checklist is a coordination failure rather than a legal one. Trap. Treating this exercise as a remediation project rather than as a permanent process change.

Outcome. A one-page brand note answering the four questions; filings made before the reveal with a distinctiveness plan; naming rights and flag agreements drafted as licences with exits; an association licence in the governing documents at formation; lease provisions covering tenant use and signage; architectural and rendering rights secured with perpetual archival use; a digital estate held in the owner's name; and a name on every asset schedule with a deliberate transfer position.

The five things people get wrong

One. Naming before clearing. The name is chosen by a consultant, approved by a board, designed into signage, and used in planning documents for three years before anyone runs a search. By then the cost of changing it exceeds the cost of defending it, which is how developments end up with names nobody can register or enforce.

Two. Treating geographic descriptiveness as a failure. Development names come from places, and a refusal under 15 U.S.C. § 1052(e) is the expected first step rather than the end of the matter. The supplemental register plus five years of exclusive use is a plan; abandoning the name on the first office action is not.

Three. Leaving the association licence to later. At formation, the licence is a paragraph in a document the developer controls entirely. A decade later it is a negotiation with a body that has used the name continuously, has residents who consider it theirs, and has no reason to agree to anything.

Four. Drafting naming rights as a sponsorship. It is a trademark licence with a fifteen-year term over a name displayed on public infrastructure. Without objective morals triggers, change of control provisions, insolvency treatment, and an allocated removal cost, the venue is exposed to whatever happens to the sponsor.

Five. Omitting the name from the asset schedule. Marks do not travel with land. The schedule lists fixtures, permits, and contracts, and the name — frequently the most valuable single item — is not on it, which produces a dispute the transaction could have resolved in a sentence.

Key Authorities at a Glance

| Authority | Proposition | |---|---| | 15 U.S.C. § 1051 | Application for registration | | 15 U.S.C. § 1052 | Refusals; descriptiveness; distinctiveness | | 15 U.S.C. § 1053 | Service marks | | 15 U.S.C. § 1055 | Related company use | | 15 U.S.C. § 1060 | Assignment with goodwill | | 15 U.S.C. § 1064 | Cancellation | | 15 U.S.C. § 1114 | Infringement | | 15 U.S.C. § 1125 | False designation | | 15 U.S.C. § 1127 | Abandonment | | 17 U.S.C. § 101 | Architectural work; work made for hire | | 17 U.S.C. § 102 | Architectural works | | 17 U.S.C. § 106 | Exclusive rights | | 17 U.S.C. § 106A | Attribution and integrity | | 17 U.S.C. § 113 | Works in buildings | | 17 U.S.C. § 120 | Pictorial representations of buildings | | 17 U.S.C. § 204 | Writing requirement | | Two Pesos v. Taco Cabana | Trade dress in a place of business | | Wal-Mart Stores v. Samara Brothers | Secondary meaning | | TrafFix Devices v. Marketing Displays | Functionality | | Qualitex v. Jacobson Products | Colour marks | | Mission Product Holdings v. Tempnology | Licence rejection in bankruptcy | | Park 'N Fly v. Dollar Park and Fly | Incontestability | | Geographic descriptiveness practice | Place name refusals | | Naming rights agreements | Venue naming | | Hotel franchise agreements | Flag licensing | | Community association marks | Association naming | | Architectural photography rights | Building imagery |