[crote]

The problem is that people wrongly believe that company names are unique. In reality you're just some paperwork and a token registration fee away from a name clash.

If anything, it's a disadvantage. People are going to be less cautious about things like the website's domain name if they see a familiar-sounding company name in that green bar. "stripe-payment.com" instead of "stripe.com"? Well, the EV says "Stripe, Inc.", so surely you're on the right website and it is totally safe to enter your credentials...

[dismantlethesun]

In many countries, company names are unique to that country. And combined with country TLDs controlled by the nation-state itself, it'd be possible for at least barclays.co.uk to be provably owned by the UK bank itself when a EV cert is presented by the domain.

In the US though, every state has it's own registry, and names overlap without the power of trademark protection applying to markets your company is not in.

[roelschroeven]

Are company names even unique within the UK? Sure, there can be only one bank named Barclays because of trademark laws, but can't there be a company in a different sector with the same name? Like Apple the computer business vs Apple the record company?

Or don't you have small local businesses (restaurants, pubs, stores) with duplicate names as long as they're in different locations? I know here in Flanders we have, for example, tens if not more places called "Café Onder den toren" (roughly translated as "Pub beneath the tower"). Do all local businesses in the UK have different names?

[crote]

That's not exactly a great example, is it? "Barclay" even has a disambiguation page on Wikipedia, because it's a reasonably common Scottish surname.

For example, there used to be a Scottish company constructing steam locomotives which traded under the "Barclays & Co" name - because it was founded by one Andrew Barclay. There's also the Barclay Academy secondary school, and a Bentley dealer which until recently operated as Jack Barclay Ltd.

And that's just the UK ones! Barclays operates internationally, which means they want "barclays.com", so suddenly there's also Barclay-the-record-label, Barclay-the-cigarette-brand, Barclay-the-liquor-brand, Barclay College, golf tournament The Barclays, Barclays Center (whose naming rights were bought by the bank, but they of course want their own completely distinct website), Barclay Theatre, three Barclay Hotels.

Of course there's also all the stuff under "Barkley", "Barkly", "Berkley", and probably a dozen other variations just waiting to be used to scam dyslexic Barclays custumers.

[dismantlethesun]

Barclays used to operate under Barclays Bank PLC. IMO, if disambiguation was problematic online they would have reverted back to that name.

You bring up good points, but I don't think that company naming has to be 100% proof against confusion, it's just one more helpful thing for consumers to identify whom they are doing business with.

In the case of close names like "Barkley", if they're doing banking, there is probably a trademark case against if they actually use it to confuse customers.

Intrestingly enough, "Barkley Holdings" was registered by competing bank HSBC: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...