The doctrine of foreign equivalents is a rule applied in United States trademark law which requires courts and the TTAB to translate foreign words in determining whether they are registrable as trademarks, or confusingly similar with existing marks. The doctrine is intended to protect consumers within the United States from confusion or deception caused by the use of terms in different languages. In some cases, a party will use a word as a mark which is either generic or merely descriptive of the goods in a foreign language, or which shares the same meaning as an existing mark to speakers of that foreign language.
Read more about Doctrine Of Foreign Equivalents: Test Applied, Status of Words in Foreign Countries, Dead and Obscure Languages, Transliterations Versus Translations, Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words doctrine of, doctrine and/or foreign:
“I have heard that whoever loves is in no condition old. I have heard that whenever the name of man is spoken, the doctrine of immortality is announced; it cleaves to his constitution. The mode of it baffles our wit, and no whisper comes to us from the other side. But the inference from the working of intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill,—at the end of life just ready to be born,—affirms the inspirations of affection and of the moral sentiment.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey.”
—Joseph Brodsky (b. 1940)
“Don’t use that foreign word “ideals.” We have that excellent native word “lies.””
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)