Gov. Agencies Regulating Companies
- From state to state, the depth of corporate information varies from as much as full reproductions of the actual documents filed with the Secretary of State (Florida), to as little as a mere list of company names incorporated in the state (with no contact or registered agent information). For a comprehensive list of all Secretary of States' web sites, see the National Association of Secretaries of States' site at http://nass.stateofthevote.org/sos/sos.html. Only some states have placed corporate records on the Internet. Unfortunately, Delaware is not among them.
- In California, the Secretary of State placed corporate, limited partnership and limited liability company records on the web in December of 1999 (http://kepler.ss.ca.gov/list.html). They are updated weekly, are searchable by partial names and include the agent for service of process.
County Fictitious Business Names
- Whether you will be able to find Fictitious Business Names records on the Web varies county to county. In San Francisco, you can perform a free fictitious business name (FBN) search at the County Clerk's website, using either the fictitious business name or the owner's name (http://cityservices.sfgov.org/serv/clerk_fbn).
- In other counties, such as Los Angeles County, one can search free, but only by the fictitious business name (http://regrec.co.la.ca.us/fbn/FBN.cfm) and even then, there is no ownership information provided. In Orange County, California you can conduct a fictitious business name search via the Web only by using GovernLink, a private company that charges $4.00 for one hour of continuous searching. The site is at http://www.oc.ca.gov/recorder/govlink.htm
Local business journals, general and legal newspapers and wires are an excellent source of information regarding companies and executives. Some helpful links can be found on Internet For Lawyers' News pages at http://www.netforlawyers.com/news.htm.
There are several meta-sites that link to general and business news and wires web sites. Major market newspapers, television and magazine news links can be found right here on Internet For Lawyers' News pages at http://www.netforlawyers.com/news.htm. Search the Drudge Report at http://www.drudgereport.com; which links to major national and international newspapers and wires, such as Reuters and AP newswires (that you can search together), wires from China and Japan, Bloomberg and the National Enquirer. For other comprehensive lists and links to newspapers, see Editor and Publisher’s site at http://www.mediainfo.com, NewsLink at http://newslink.org/news.html (both list newspapers by region) or CEO Express at http://www.ceoexpress.com (lists news sources by subjects). Northern Light at http://www.northernlight.com provides free real-time news (covering the past two weeks) from 33 newswires.
