Doctrine Of Foreign Equivalents: A Pragmatic Approach

"A different language is a different vision of life": Federico Fellini

A language is the mirror through which you can see and learn the soul of a nation. The language breaks the barrier of communication and established an atmosphere where the welfare of people flourishes. The language may also some time create confusion in case of trademark registration as there are various words which may be generic in one language and applied for registration in a country where people are not familiar with the language or vice versa. In this kind of situation the doctrine of foreign equivalent comes into picture wherein foreign words from common languages are translated into English to determine genericness, descriptiveness, as well as similarity of connotation in order to ascertain confusing similarity with English word marks.