How does one determine if a name (game name or company name) is copyrighted? I want the name of my game to be Tilt!, but I'm thinking it's so simple there MUST be some other game out there with that name (although I can't find anything).
Thanks!

Oddly enough, you can't copyright a title. You can however, trademark one. A lawyer could easily help you do a trademark search; I don't know if there's a free/online way to do this.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, and only occasionally get to see one on TV when I manage to catch Law & Order.)

You can check to see what names are trademarked here

http://www.uspto.gov/web/menu/tm.html
Select Search from the top of the page and under USPTO Search Collections select trademarks. It's easy after that.

That's such a handy web site. It feels good when you search there and get something like; "Sorry, no matches were found for your query." It should really say "congratulations" instead of sorry though. ;) And another thing, sometimes out of curiosity I've done a search on a popular word and you get multiple trademarks for the exact same word. When you compare details they are trademarks for totally unrelated businesses. I assume this is okay as long as your businesses or products don't match. Can anyone back this up? Tams11?

Disclaimer: I'm not quailified to answer this question.

But I can tell you how I understand it all to work and why.

I believe that someone can hold a trademark on "Clue" the board game and someone else hold the trademark on "Clue" the detective agency.

On the Trademark website I found this statement:
a legal presumption of the registrant's ownership of the mark and the registrant's exclusive right to use the mark nationwide on or in connection with the goods and/or services listed in the registration;

It says "on or in connection with the goods and/or services". Since the board game and the detective agency are totally different goods and/or services, I don't think one is infringing on the other.

Now if someone wanted to call their computer software company "Clue" then I believe that would be infringing on the rights of "Clue" the board game (computer game) since they are similar goods and/or services.

Now if someone wanted to call their computer software company "Cloo" then I believe this is also infringing because the names are similar and the services are similar.

These are only my logical findings. I wouldn't doubt that the real way is a bit less logical so don't take my word for it. A lawyer is the one that will have the best answers for you.

When you look at a trademark, you will se that it is listed as belonging to a particular International Class (IC). Each IC is a different category of goods & services. As I recall, computer games fall into the IC28 category, which is something like entertainment & recreation. It includes things like sporting goods too. In general, you usually don't have more than 1 trademark on a name for a particular IC, but if they are in distinct markets its usually OK to have more than one.

However, there are some names that are popular enough that, no matter what IC they belong to, you can't use it. You probably aren't going to get away with naming your game company Pepsi or Taco Bell, even if they are in another IC.

Ahhh, I see now. There are always some less obvious details that seem to blend into the background. It seems to make enough sense though.