Trade mark law

The twenty-second entry is a falta de uso sério, and the adjective inside it is the one word on this page an English writer must not carry straight across. Sério is « serious », and the phrase looks as though it ought to come out as « serious use ». It does not. The term of art in English trade mark law is « genuine use »: use that is real, on the market, for the goods registered, and not got up for the file to keep a registration breathing. The two adjectives pull at different things. « Serious » asks how much and how earnestly; « genuine » asks whether the thing is what it claims to be. A handful of invoices arranged just before a deadline can be perfectly serious in effort and still not genuine, and that is the case the word was chosen to catch. Portuguese and French both took the other branch — o uso sério, usage sérieux — so whoever reads either has to change the adjective rather than its letters. Write « genuine use », and keep « serious » for the tone of a warning letter.