Using translated company type on website

Question

Is it legal to display the translated the company type on a website in English if the site itself is English? Also, on a bill?

My specific problem is that in my country (Hungary), the short name for limited liability company is KFC (korlátolt felelősségű [egyéni] cég) which sounds weird as it reads just as Kentucky Fried Chicken. Can I use it like LLC on my website or everything should be as-is, like S.R.O. or GMBH? (Using the long version isn't an option either, some foreign phrase would scare the customers away.)

Answer 1

Some people make the Kft. to LLC translation that you suggest and it would probably not be illegal to do so if other text did not imply that it was anything other than a Hungarian entity.

From a practical perspective, the best solution is to spell out the company type in Hungarian, possibly in a footnote.

For example, suppose that your company is called "Magyar Delponeous" (because it is easier to explain by example).

You could say "Magyar Delphoneous*" or "Magyar Delphoneous, Kft.*" in the body text, with a footnote at the bottom of a page that says following an asterisks that: "The company is a Hungarian Kft. (korlátolt felelősségű társaság), a non-stock business form similar to a U.S. limited liability company or a German GmbH".

It would also be proper to say "Magyar Delponeous, a Hungarian limited liability company" in unabbreviated form, because the most common translation of "korlátolt felelősségű társaság" is "limited liability company".

But, I would disfavor using the form "Magyar Delphoneous, LLC" because it could implicitly suggest a non-Hungarian place of entity formation where the abbreviation LLC is used, and avoiding any implication of being misleading is best.

KFC is not the common or correct abbreviation for this form of entity.

Answer 2

Although I don't know about trademark treaties/legislation, the fact that KFC is the Hungarian equivalent of LLC makes it very unlikely that Kentucky Fried Chicken could monopolize the use of its acronym. Otherwise, it would be as if a company with acronym AG could legally prevent thousands of German companies (including multinationals) from appending AG (which stands for Aktiengesellschaft) to their name.

In Mionix, LLC vs. ACS Technology, the court explained that trademark infringement

fall[s] within the purview of the Lanham Act. A claim for violating this section of the Lanham Act will ultimately succeed if the accused party's alleged misuse of another's property created a "likelihood of confusion" for consumers as to the source of the competing products.

(citations omitted).

Thus, the question would be whether appending the company type --which I presume will be prefixed by the name of your company-- in your website and invoices may realistically cause any confusion with a fast-food franchise that might not even be your competitor.