The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear Vetements’ challenge to the refusal of its name to be registered as a U.S. trademark, leaving intact a line of decisions that treat foreign-language marks through the lens of direct translation. In an order issued on January 12, the Court denied Vetements Group AG’s petition for certiorari, bringing an end to the fashion brand’s effort to overturn the application of the “doctrine of foreign equivalents” to its VETEMENTS name.
The denial leaves standing rulings from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) and the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, which found that “vetements” – the French word for “clothing” – is generic or, at best, merely descriptive when used in connection with apparel and related retail services, a conclusion the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed on appeal.
Translation vs. Perception
The dispute stems from Vetements’ attempt to register its name in the U.S. for clothing and online retail store services for clothing. The USPTO rejected the application in December 2021, finding that the mark, when translated into English, directly names the goods themselves. Applying the doctrine of foreign equivalents, the agency concluded that VETEMENTS was “generic at worst and descriptive at best,” and lacked evidence of acquired distinctiveness.
That reasoning was affirmed at every stage of review. Both the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and the Federal Circuit treated translation as a threshold step, reasoning that if a foreign term translates to a generic English word, the analysis largely ends there.
In its petition to the Supreme Court, Vetements framed that approach as out of step with modern trademark law. The brand argued that trademark protection turns on how consumers actually perceive a mark, not on how it appears in a dictionary. According to Vetements, fewer than one percent of Americans speak French well enough to translate “vetements” to “clothing,” and, as a result, U.S. consumers are unlikely to perceive the term as descriptive rather than as a brand name.
The Government’s Position
The U.S. government urged the Court to deny review. In a November opposition brief, Solicitor General John Sauer characterized the case as a straightforward application of settled law. Registering “Vetements” for clothing, the government argued, would be inconsistent with the Lanham Act’s core purpose of identifying source and avoiding consumer confusion.
The brief defended the doctrine of foreign equivalents as a necessary safeguard against monopolization of common words, asserting that granting trademark rights in “vetements” would be akin to allowing exclusive rights in the word “clothing.” The government rejected those consumer-perception arguments, contending that French is widely taught and commonly encountered in fashion contexts, and emphasizing that Vetements failed to establish secondary meaning even under a descriptiveness analysis.
THE BOTTOM LINE: By denying certiorari, the Supreme Court declined to revisit the doctrine of foreign equivalents, and instead, leaves the existing framework untouched. For Vetements, the practical result is clear: the brand remains unable to register its name as a U.S. trademark on the current record. For international brands more broadly, the decision reinforces a familiar warning. Foreign-language branding does not insulate a mark from scrutiny, and if a term translates directly to the goods it covers, U.S. registration will remain an uphill battle.
The broader question Vetements posed – whether trademark law should prioritize linguistic translation or marketplace reality – remains unanswered.
The case is In re Vetements Group AG, 137 F.4th 1317 (Fed. Cir.).
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