Justices Decline to Explore Foreign-Word Trademark Doctrine

The US Supreme Court won’t address the standards to register trademarks consisting of generic, foreign words as it declined to take up the case of a Swiss clothier whose name means “clothes” in French.

Vetements Group AG’s petition told the high court US trademark law’s “doctrine of foreign equivalents” often nullifies legitimate rights to distinctive marks. Automatically denying protection if a brand’s translation is perceived as generic by less than 1% of US consumers opens the door to counterfeiters, Vetements argued.

The company applied for several trademarks on “Vetements” and “Vetements Haute Couture” in 2020. Some covering non-clothing merchandise were ...