Decisions · 86586833
In re Twenty-Two Desserts, LLC
Serial No. 86586833 · Decided 2019-08-06 · Other
What happened
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board refused to register the mark MALAI on the Supplemental Register for ice cream and frozen desserts because the word ‘malai’ — though originally a Hindi term for cream — has been adopted into English-language use to name a type of creamy food and a subcategory of ice cream (such as ‘malai kulfi’ and ‘mango malai ice cream’), making it a common descriptive name that no single company can own as a trademark.
The marks
Applicant
MALAI
Ice cream, gelato, dairy-free ice cream, frozen yogurt, frozen desserts, ice cream sandwiches, sorbet, freezer pops, and ice cream sundaes in International Class 30
Why this decision is significant
Precedential decision clarifying that a foreign-origin word adopted into English culinary vocabulary can be found generic without applying the doctrine of foreign equivalents, and that Supplemental Register applicants concede descriptiveness and cannot invoke alternate-meaning defenses. Particularly useful for food and beverage genericness cases involving culturally specific ingredient names.
Research significance is Trademark Valet's editorial rating of how useful a decision is to practitioners. It is not a statement of precedential weight — that is the separate Precedential field, which comes from the Board.
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The original record
Read the opinion and every filing on the Board's own docket. The summary above is our paraphrase, not a quotation from the opinion. The opinion is the authority.
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