On January 8 of this year, the National Department of Business Registration and Integration – DREI issued DREI/MEMP Normative Instruction No. 1/2025, which sets out in a single rule the issues involving the analysis of the business name and the criteria to be observed for its formation and protection.

In general terms, the instruction establishes analysis criteria for verifying the similarity and conformity of business names and imposes rules on the essential aspects for the protection, alteration and collision of business names. The rule also deals with the inclusion of the fantasy name of companies in public commercial registers.

As highlights, the rule

(i) conceptualizes the business name, social denomination and trade name;

(ii) indicates the principles of veracity, novelty and identification of the company’s legal type as guiding principles for the business name;

(iii) special situations of ‘judicial reorganization’ or ‘liquidation’ must be linked to the social denomination;

(iv) the scope of protection of the business name continues to be statewide, but the interested party may, upon presentation and approval of the viability, file the request for extension of protection to the business name in each state that it wants to have the name protected;

(v) the business owner, the company or an interested third party may request a re-examination or revision process in case of an error in the business name or if the business name infringes the principles of veracity, novelty and/or good faith;

(vi) the collision of business names due to identity may be contested by means of an Appeal to the Board of Trade’s Plenary, within 10 business days of the party being notified or of the act being published in the Board of Trade’s official advertising organ; and

(vii) the inclusion of the fantasy name in the public commercial register will be by provision in the constitutive act or instrument of amendment of the corporate act, and if it is already included in a specific clause of the constitutive act or registered instrument of amendment, the fantasy name – or establishment title – may be registered by request for the filing of a document of interest in the corporate records.

Although it did not innovate in a major way, IN DREI/MEMP No. 1/2025 sought to compile and systematize rules on the business name consolidated by sparse state rules, articles of law, uses and habits, in order to guarantee legal certainty in the business environment.

The Business Law team at Nasser Advogados is ready to help you.