The procedure necessary for a reserving a company name in Romania can be performed by anyone in Romania at any Trade Register in Romania by filling in a special form and paying a fee for this service. Although the future company will be registered with a local Trade Register, the company name must be unique on a nationwide level and be substantially different than any company name already registered. This verification is therefore concluded throughout Romania and not just in the respective county of registration.
The name reservation of your future Romanian company can be made by any person even if this person will be a shareholder of director (administrator) or not. You do not need any additional document for reserving the name of your Romanian company; however the reservation with the Trade Register does not offer you copyright protection such as the registration with the Office of Trademarks and Patents in Romania.
Important aspects of registering a company name in Romania:
1) The name must be unique in Romania. Even if the name is too similar to others it will be refused. This requirement combined with the nationwide name verification has as result the increasing difficulty of registering a Romanian company name. It is therefore advised to provide approx. 5 possible company names (choices) to your attorney that are as different as possible to one another and contain at least 2-3 words. This will enable a quick company name reservation.
2) The name can only contain the word “ROMANIA” if this was firstly approved by the Romanian Government through a special procedure that can take over 1 month;
3) There is a list of words that are not considered “differentiation elements” from other company names already registered, such as: IMPORT EXPORT, SERVICES, LIMITED etc.
The availability and registration of a company name is done by filing a special request containing (see photo) containing the following main fields:
- all identification details of the person filing the request;
- reason for filing the request (availability, registration, prolongation, changing the company’s headquarters);
- 3 company names in their order of preference;
- choice to request a list of Romanian companies with similar/same company names if the request is not successful;
- proof of payment of the necessary fee with the Trade Register;
- Contact person for all related communications related to the name registration.
We advise all clients interested in reserving a company name to contact us for a pre-verification of the company name. This pre-verification will be performed free of charge and can be conducted in a 24-hour period. Please note that the procedure of name reservation in Bucharest or in any other Romanian city is the first step in the company formation procedure of any Romanian company, a service that our law firm provides.