Short answer: yes, and it happens constantly. There are about thirty Deltas, two well-known Doves (soap and chocolate), three Polos (the sport, the Ralph Lauren brand, the VW car), and for about thirty years there were two famous Apples, one in Cupertino and one in London.
The reason all of this works is something called the Nice Classification, an international system that splits everything you can trademark into 45 buckets. Trademarks aren't owned globally over a name. They're owned over a name inside a class. Two companies can hold the identical mark if their classes don't overlap and nobody would reasonably confuse one for the other.
The 45 classes, in one breath
Classes 1–34 are goods (chemicals, paints, food, clothing, software, machinery, firearms, wine, jewellery; software lives in class 9, by the way), and classes 35–45 are services (advertising, telecom, transport, education, legal, scientific research). The full taxonomy is run by WIPO under the Nice Agreement and gets reissued every five years.
When you file a USPTO application you pick the class (or classes) and pay per class. Fees are $250 per class on TEAS Plus and $350 on TEAS Standard (per the USPTO fee schedule). That's why most early-stage filings are one class, and why big companies file defensive registrations in adjacent classes to head off would-be squatters. An exact-name USPTO TSDR search for a famous mark like APPLE turns up registrations across more than a dozen classes.
The Apple v Apple saga
In 1968 the Beatles started Apple Corps, a record label. In 1976 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computer. Same mark, different industries: recordings on one side, personal computers on the other. Apple Corps sued Apple Computer in 1978. The case settled in 1981 for $80,000, with Apple Computer agreeing to stay out of the music business.
That agreement was renegotiated in 1991 over Apple Computer's growing audio capabilities (this time Apple Computer paid $26.5 million). Then iTunes happened. Then the iPod. Apple Corps sued again in 2003, arguing that selling music through a computer counted as "the music business." The case went to trial in the UK High Court in 2006 and Apple Computer won. The trademark dispute was finally settled in 2007, when Apple (by then renamed from Apple Computer) bought out the entire trademark interest from Apple Corps for a reported $500 million. The lesson: classes are a snapshot, products evolve, and the line between classes can erode over thirty years.
The Delta cases (why two Deltas don't fight)
Delta Air Lines (class 39, transport) and Delta Faucet (class 11, plumbing fixtures) have held the same wordmark for over half a century with no litigation, because nobody books a flight expecting to get a kitchen tap. There's no likelihood of confusion between an airline and a faucet manufacturer.
Likelihood of confusion is the legal test that actually decides whether two same-named marks can coexist. In the US, the DuPont factors (from In re E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 476 F.2d 1357 (CCPA 1973), a list of 13 things federal courts and the USPTO weigh) drive this analysis. Other circuits use slightly different lists, but the same six concepts show up in nearly every articulation. See the deep on likelihood of confusion for the full breakdown. The factors that matter most in practice:
- Similarity of marks: visually, phonetically, conceptually
- Similarity of goods/services: are they in adjacent channels?
- Channels of trade: do they sell in the same kinds of places?
- Strength of the senior mark: famous marks get more protection
- Actual confusion: survey evidence, returned products, support tickets
A small dev tool sharing a name with a global brand isn't automatically safe just because the class is different. Trademark dilution (15 U.S.C. § 1125(c), added by the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995 and revised by the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006) lets famous marks (Apple, Coca-Cola, McDonald's) block uses that would tarnish or blur the mark even across totally unrelated classes. So: don't name your AI startup Coca-Cola.
Where this gets messy
Common-law marks
Federal registration is strong, but in the US registration isn't required to have rights. Using a mark in commerce, even unregistered, creates common-law trademark rights in the geographic area where it's used. The unregistered-mark cause of action is codified in 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a). The checker only sees the federal register. A clean USPTO search doesn't tell you nobody in Portland has been quietly running a coffee shop called dibbed for twelve years.
Different countries, different registers
A US trademark gets you US rights. The EU runs its own register (EUIPO). The UK has Companies House for entities and the UKIPO for marks. WIPO's Madrid System lets you file once at your home office and designate many member jurisdictions in one application (~130 countries as of 2026). The checker surfaces deep links to the EUIPO and Companies House search UIs for this reason. For an international brand, every jurisdiction is still its own separate search.
Pending applications
Someone filed for your name two months ago and the application is still in examination? The trademark register shows them as pending: not yet a registered mark, but senior in line. Worth knowing before spending money on letterhead. USPTO TSDR shows application status alongside registration status.
What to actually do
For an indie launch, the practical workflow:
- Run the name through dibbed.dev. Clears the federal register and the easy collision points (domains, package registries, social handles).
- If it's clean, search Google for
"<name>" companyand"<name>" startup. Surfaces common-law users. - For a brand that will see real spend (logos, packaging, ads), pay an IP attorney for a clearance opinion. Costs $500–$2,000 and tells you whether your specific use is likely to draw a cease-and-desist.
- File a USPTO application yourself or via a service like LegalZoom ($300–$500 plus USPTO fees) once committed. Filing locks in a priority date even before launch.
The TLDR: a name being "available" is a much weaker statement than people assume. Two companies sharing a name is fine if they're in different lanes and the senior mark isn't famous enough to dilute. The checker tells you instantly whether anyone's federally registered it. The rest is a judgement call best made with actual data, and ideally a lawyer.
Ready to check a name? Run it through dibbed.dev →