About Sphere
Sphere helps founders, brands, and smaller teams make clearer decisions before they file, launch, expand, or put a name, product, or catalogue out into the world. We start with brand conflict checking, but the broader aim is simple: reduce avoidable legal, commercial, and discoverability risk early before it becomes expensive.
What Sphere Does
Sphere began with a practical problem: too many businesses commit to names, products, and launch plans before checking whether the ground beneath them is actually clear.
Our conflict check gives you a quick sense of whether a name might hold up. But that is only part of the picture.
In practice, businesses also lose momentum through weaker discoverability, unclear positioning, poor metadata, muddled public-facing presentation, and a lack of readiness for how search and AI-driven discovery now shape visibility. Sphere is built to help identify that friction earlier and make the next step clearer.
Who It's For
Sphere is built for teams that need a clearer view of risk, visibility, and readiness before committing time and money.
How It Works
1. Check the Name
Run a free check to see if your name might cause problems before you commit to it.
2. Go Deeper
Unlock a fuller review if needed — covering conflicts, commercial clarity, and where a name, product, or list may be creating avoidable friction.
3. Decide the Next Step
If the issue is real, move to specialist support — whether that means legal advice, a deeper review, or help tightening visibility and presentation.
Why It Matters
Most avoidable mistakes happen too early to feel urgent.
A team chooses a name that looks usable but is harder to protect. A launch goes ahead with weak public-facing clarity. A product or catalogue loses visibility because metadata, positioning, and search readiness were not thought through properly. A problem that was small upstream becomes expensive downstream.
Sphere exists to help catch that earlier. No tool can guarantee that a name is safe or that a rollout will succeed. But a fast, grounded review can surface the issues most likely to slow you down — and help you decide what to fix now, what to watch, and when to bring in specialist advice.
For Teams With More Than One Issue to Solve
Some organisations do not just need a single check. They need a broader view across naming, rollout risk, discoverability, metadata, rights, and public-facing clarity.
That is especially true for teams managing multiple brands, product lines, or backlist/frontlist assets.
Where needed, Sphere can support more focused review work beyond the initial check.
Current Focus
Sphere is currently focused on two connected areas:
That includes improving the quality of conflict checks, expanding jurisdiction coverage, and developing practical review work around metadata, visibility, and public-facing clarity — especially where search and AI are changing how brands, books, and businesses are found.
Sphere is developed by Eric Akoto, founder of Litro and The Sphere Initiative.