Place names are the most natural brand names there are. They say where you are from, they carry a reputation you did not have to build, and they are the reason a surprising number of applications get refused.
Two refusals, one question
Everything turns on one question asked twice: would buyers believe the goods come from the place named in the mark? If yes and they do come from there, the refusal is under section 2(e)(2), primarily geographically descriptive. If yes and they do not, the refusal is under section 2(e)(3), primarily geographically deceptively misdescriptive, and it is much worse.
TMEP section 1210.01(a) sets out what an examining attorney has to show for the first:
- the primary significance of the mark is a generally known geographic location;
- the goods or services originate in the place identified in the mark; and
- purchasers would be likely to believe that the goods or services originate there.
Section 1210.01(b) sets out the second, which has the same first element, the opposite second element, and one more:
- the primary significance of the mark is a generally known geographic location;
- the goods or services do not originate there;
- purchasers would be likely to believe that they do; and
- the misrepresentation is a material factor in a substantial portion of the relevant consumer's decision to buy.
Being based there is what proves the case
Here is the part that catches people who assume honesty is a defence. From TMEP section 1210.04:
"When the geographic significance of a term is its primary significance and the geographic place is neither obscure nor remote, for purposes of §2(e)(2), the goods/place or services/place association may ordinarily be presumed from the fact that the applicant's goods or services originate in or near the place named in the mark."
So the fact that you really are in Denver, and your shirts really are made there, is not the answer to a DENVER WESTERNS refusal. It is the evidence for it. The cases the manual collects are a list of businesses named honestly after where they were: YOSEMITE BEER brewed near the park, CALIFORNIA PIZZA KITCHEN for restaurant services originating in California, MINNESOTA CIGAR COMPANY, DENVER WESTERNS for western shirts made in Denver, and in 2025, PRINCETON EQUITY GROUP for financial services provided from Princeton, New Jersey.
The presumption is rebuttable, and obscure or remote places are treated differently, because the public is unlikely to make the association at all for a place it does not know.
If your goods really do come from there
This is the softer of the two refusals, the one under section 2(e)(2), and it can be worked around. Three routes are ordinary.
- Acquired distinctiveness. Show that buyers have come to treat the name as your brand rather than as a statement of origin, under section 2(f).
- The Supplemental Register. Available while the mark is still capable of becoming distinctive, and it is a real filing with real notice value, if narrower.
- Disclaim it inside a larger mark. TMEP section 1210.06(a) allows this where the geographic term is a separable element and the additional matter is inherently distinctive, meaning coined, arbitrary, fanciful or suggestive. If the geographic term is not separable, or if none of the other matter is inherently distinctive, the whole mark is refused. And a mark cannot register if everything in it has been disclaimed.
That last route is the practical one for most businesses: put a distinctive word in front of the place, and expect to disclaim the place. What a disclaimer actually does covers what you are and are not giving up.
If they do not, and buyers would care
Then you are in the other category, the one under section 2(e)(3), and there is no way around it: no proof of recognition helps, and the Supplemental Register is not available either. The materiality element is the real limit on the refusal: the misrepresentation has to matter to a substantial portion of buyers, which is why the refusal shows up most in categories where origin is part of the value, such as spirits, textiles, food and luxury goods.
Two cases in TMEP section 1210.04 show how little a label can do to save one. For REAL RUSSIAN vodka, the statement "Hand Made in the U.S.A." on the label did not negate the deceptive misdescriptiveness of the mark. For OLD HAVANA rum, neither "Cuban Style Rum" nor "Product of the USA" did. Evidence elsewhere on the packaging does not undo what the mark itself conveys.
Services are a harder case than goods
The manual notes, citing the Federal Circuit in In re Les Halles De Paris, that it is more difficult to establish a services/place association than a goods/place association for refusals under sections 2(e)(3) and 2(a). A restaurant in New York with a French name is not claiming the services come from France in the way a bottle of wine claims its origin.
Before you name yourself after your city
- Expect the place to be weak matter. Whatever route you take, the geographic word is not what will protect you. The distinctive word beside it is.
- Check the goods, not just the name. The same word can be geographic for one product and arbitrary for another. Origin is what links them.
- Do not name a place you are not. The upside is a reputation you did not earn; the downside is the one refusal in this family with no cure.
- Look at who is already there. Place names crowd quickly, because everyone in town has the same idea. Trademarking a common word covers what a crowded field does to your scope.
The grounds of refusal puts the geographic bars beside the others an application has to clear.
General information about U.S. trademark law, current as of the May 2026 revision of the TMEP.