Using one or more fictitious business names does not create additional separate legal entities.
The Companies Registration Office publishes a searchable register of such business names.
In Colonial Nigeria, certain tribes had members that used a variety of trading names to conduct business with the Europeans.
Both Pepple and Jaja would bequeath their trade names to their royal descendants as official surnames upon their deaths.
A DBA filing carries no legal weight in establishing trademark rights.
Generally, a DBA must be registered with a local or state government, or both, depending on the jurisdiction.
A typical real-world example can be found in a well-known pricing mistake case, Donovan v. RRL Corp., 26 Cal.
In California, filing a DBA statement also requires that a notice of the fictitious name be published in local newspapers for some set period of time to inform the public of the owner's intent to operate under an assumed name.
The intention of the law is to protect the public from fraud, by compelling the business owner to first file or register his fictitious business name with the county clerk, and then making a further public record of it by publishing it in a newspaper.