The instinct is sound. The English word for what you sell is generic, so you reach for the French, Italian or Japanese one, and it feels like a brand instead of a label. Trademark law has had a rule for this for nearly a century, and the Federal Circuit applied it again in 2025.
The doctrine, and the 2025 case
TMEP section 1209.03(g) sets it out, quoting In re Vetements Group AG, decided by the Federal Circuit in 2025. The doctrine of foreign equivalents is used:
"to ascertain if a non-English word mark is impermissibly generic or descriptive by translating the mark into English and then considering its genericness or descriptiveness"
And the consequence:
"The foreign equivalent of merely descriptive or generic English wording is no more registrable than the English wording itself."
In Vetements the mark was VETEMENTS, the French word meaning clothing, for clothing and for online retail clothing store services. It was held generic. The rule the court relied on goes back to a 1933 decision: a word taken from a well-known modern foreign language, which is itself descriptive of a product, will be treated as descriptive when someone tries to register it in the United States for that same product.
What it catches
The examples in the manual show the range, and it is wider than food menus:
- IMAGENES ESCONDIDAS, Spanish for hidden pictures, merely descriptive for children's books and magazines.
- SADORU, Japanese for saddle, merely descriptive for motorcycle seats and pads.
- AYUMI, Japanese for walking, merely descriptive for footwear.
- SAPORITO, Italian for tasty, merely descriptive for dry sausage, because it describes a desirable characteristic.
- Chinese characters meaning ORIENTAL DAILY NEWS, merely descriptive of the subject matter of a newspaper.
Two of those translate a quality rather than the product itself, which is the case people least expect. Tasty is descriptive in English, so it is descriptive in Italian, on Italian sausage, in an American application.
When the doctrine is not applied
It is not mechanical. The manual says the doctrine is a guideline, not an absolute rule, and that it:
"should be applied unless it is unlikely that the ordinary American purchaser would stop and translate the non-English wording into its English equivalent"
The ordinary American purchaser includes buyers familiar with the language in question, so the question is not whether most Americans speak it. Obscure languages, dead languages and wording that would read as a coined term rather than a word to be translated are where the argument lives. A word from a widely spoken modern language, sitting on the product it names, is not.
The combination that still registers
There is a genuine route through, and the manual sets it out in the same section. Marks made of a foreign term used with an English term may be found registrable where the combination creates a commercial impression different from the one two English words would create. The examples:
- TAVERNA COSTERA for restaurant, cafe and bar services, registered on the Principal Register with TAVERNA disclaimed.
- LA YOGURT for yogurt, registered with the English word YOGURT disclaimed.
- GLACE LITE for frozen desserts, not merely descriptive, because pairing the French GLACE with the English LITE is somewhat incongruous.
- LE CASE for jewelry and gift boxes, registered with CASE disclaimed.
The pattern is worth reading carefully, because it is not "add an article and you are fine". In each of those the composite as a whole was found to create an impression the plain English words would not, and in most of them the descriptive English word was disclaimed. What a disclaimer actually does covers that half.
The other direction: translations create conflicts
The doctrine is not only a descriptiveness rule. It is applied when comparing marks as well, which means a foreign word and its English equivalent can be held confusingly similar even though they share no letters and no sounds. The manual points to its likelihood of confusion sections for that use, and the practical effect is easy to state: a name that means the same thing as an existing registration can be refused on that basis.
This is the part that undermines do-it-yourself searching. Searching for spellings close to your name will never surface a registration that means the same thing in another language. Our own searches query meaning-alikes, translations included, against the register for exactly that reason, and the report lists every name it ran so you can see which ones were checked.
You have to tell the USPTO what it means
This is a filing requirement, not a judgment call. TMEP section 809 states it flatly: an application to register a mark that includes non-English wording must include an English translation of that wording. The same goes for transliteration where the mark is in non-Latin characters. In a 2023 decision the Board affirmed a requirement for a translation of ZHIMA, where the evidence showed it was used and recognized as a transliteration of the Chinese characters for sesame.
It reaches compound words too. The manual's example is GRINCANTCOMPUTERS, where the impression is two words and the French one has to be translated. Its counter-example is FELIZCITY, which reads as a play on felicity rather than as two words, so no translation of the Spanish feliz is required.
Two practical consequences. You cannot quietly hope nobody notices the meaning, because you are the one who has to state it. And a translation you supply is evidence in your own file, which is how a descriptiveness refusal often arrives.
The translation that counts is the one buyers would recognise
Section 809.02 is about equivalency, and it is more subtle than a dictionary lookup. The translation relied on in examination is the English meaning that has significance in the United States as the equivalent of the foreign meaning, not necessarily the literal one.
The manual's own examples: MAIS OUI translates as why, certainly, rather than the literal but yes. SCHWARZKOPF can be literally translated as black head, but its primary significance even to German speakers is a surname. And CHAT NOIR was refused registration because the exact equivalent, BLACK CAT, was already registered for related goods, a translation the purchasing public would undoubtedly recognise.
That last one is the §2(d) half of the doctrine in a single line. A French mark can be refused over an English registration it shares no letters with.
What to do with your own name
- Translate it yourself first. If the translation is the name of your product or a quality of it, expect the translation to be what gets examined.
- Check whether the English version would register. That is the actual question. If PAIN would not register for bread, neither will the French word for it.
- Look for incongruity, not decoration. The combinations that survived created a different impression, rather than dressing up the same one.
- Search for meaning, not spelling. Your conflict may be an English mark you would never think to look for.
The distinctiveness spectrum explains why the generic rung is the one with no way out, in any language.
General information about U.S. trademark law, current as of the May 2026 revision of the TMEP.