Do not overlook the importance of trademarks:

Be sure that you can obtain a trademark for your name from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (uspto.gov).

Be aware of the "gotchas" in what are considered acceptable trademarks.

For instance, under U.S. law, a "geographically (mis)-descriptive" trade name is often very difficult to trademark.

Furthermore, trademarks are often not addressed by OSI-approved open-source licenses (The GPL, for example). Therefore, obtaining a trademark for your open-source project can be a very effective way of de-comoditizing your open source project, achieving containment of forks, and building a revenue-generating business around your code base. Example: Red Hat vs Centos.

Own your namespace.