So, you can either try to change what's in the vocabulary of 300 million people for generations. Or change your brand name. They chose the first. Interesting.
That's trade mark laws for you. If you don't try and protect your trade mark at every opportunity it can be stripped from you and every Tom, Dick, and Harry can put out whatever they want with your name/term.
I get it, but still, that's the law for you. The most of us will still say Velcro because it's what we all know it as.
Reminds me of the dark ages, when Xerox was so dominant in the copier market that people used their brand as a noun and a verb. They were threatened with loss of their trademark, because it had become so generic. So they had a massive publicity campaign, asking people to say "copy" instead of "xerox".
Is this a uniquely US thing? In the UK, people always say "hoover" instead of "vacuum".
In Brazil, "xerox" is synonym with copy and is used in pretty much any context where the latter word makes sense (even if it's not a copy of a document). The verb "xerocar" derives from it, and even appears in dictionaries.
This happens a lot here in Brazil. Some brands are so famous that they are synonyms of some products, e. g. Gillette (razor blade), Bom Bril (steel wool), Insulfim (window film) and so on.
Xerox is a curious thing here. It is a so strong synonym to photocopy that almost no one remembers that it is a brand (at least, I don't remember seeing in person any Xerox device). It is so strong that xerox also means the shops were the photocopies are made.
Just place Google Maps over São Paulo, search for "xerox" and see what happens
Frigidaire and its abbreviated form frigo is the standard name for a refrigerator (nobody ever says "réfrigérateur").
Kleenex is the standard word meaning "paper handkerchief".
Sopalin is the standard word for "roll of paper towels".
Many automotive parts are called from a brand name too : "Delco" is the only name an igniter is ever called; a flexible black tube is always called a "Durit" whatever its brand.
A modular pre-made, stackable non permanent housing module is an "Algeco".
A bus stop with a roof is called an Abribus.
A supermarket trolley is almost always called a Caddie.
A credit card is universally called a "Carte Bleue" or CB, to the point that people will happily use the nonsensical "CB" acronym for a credit card when speaking English.
Cellophane is called Cellophane. I don't even know of an another word for it :)
- rubalise for the white-and-red tape used in streets
- mobylette for that very specific old style scooter
- pédalo for the floating thingy on the beaches with pedals
As for cellophane I always called it "film plastique" or just "plastique", but this varies a lot from region to region and family to family.
As for Durit, it's actually a bit more interesting as the brand was genericised to "durite". It's so prevalent that we have expressions using it like "péter une durite" as a way to say "going crazy".
In Russian we also do this 1uite a lot. Xerox, google and photoshop are absolutely normal for activities.
Also, thermos for vacuum flask. Dandy is a term for NES clones. doshirak or rolton for ramen noodles. Fairy for dish washing liquid.
Sure, it is also klaxon, cellophane and scotch.
Interesting, that champagne is the only case I know that won the fight. My friends often say sparkling wine for generic brands.
In Brazil it is still used as a photocopy term (much easier to say "tirar uma xerox" than "tirar uma fotocópia").
Other common terms that we use that came from brands:
shaving razor -> gilete (instead of "lâmina de barbear")
chewing gum -> chiclete (instead of "goma de mascar")
cotton swab -> cotonete (a J&J brand, instead of "haste flexível")
polystyrene -> isopor (a Knauf brand, instead of "esferovite" or "poliestireno expandido")
I think the "defend it or lose it" nature of trademarks may be a US wrinkle, but I'm not sure.
During the 90s, Nintendo popularized the use of the term "game console" to avoid people's moms calling their competitors "Nintendos". Like Atari before them, their name had become synonymous with video games in general, something they wanted to avoid in order to protect their trademark.
There are references to "consoles" before this happened, dating back to the early 80s, but in everyday language most kids called them "video game systems" or by their brand names (Atari, Nintendo, Sega, etc.).
The manuals for the NES, SNES, and N64 never once used the term "Game Console". They exclusively called it the "Control Deck". It's not until the GameCube (2001) that they finally refer to the system as a "Console" in the user manual.
Does anyone know any people who actually called their consoles "Control Decks"?
Again, Control Deck was how they branded their own products. In the 90s they ran advertisements advising people to refer to their competitors' products as game consoles. I don't remember anyone using the term "Control Deck" to refer to the console.
Nintendo also referred to their cartridges as Game Paks, another term not used outside official Nintendo materials (including Nintendo Power). Everybody just called them cartridges, carts, or just games. It kind of reminds me of how Texas Instruments tried to get "Command Module" over as a term for their TI-99/4(A) cartridges. It didn't go over.
Oddly enough, the official TI-ism for the 99/4A unit itself was "console".
It was one of those things I could've sworn I saw at the time. It would've been later than that one, and I swear it was Nintendo urging the use of the term console. It could be something else, or I might be misremembering entirely.
In Russian it did stick as a word for photocopiers (ксерокс), copies (ксерокопия) and the act of copying (ксерить, ксерокопировать) to this day.
At this point it's more of a legend, but it goes that the word we use for toilet, унитаз, is the brand name of the company that sold toilets in 19th century.
Scotch is one brand of adhesive tape but we call all such tape "скотч".
In Canada an in-sink garbage disposal unit is called a Garburator. I recently learned that’s a brand name of said devices. I’ve lived in the states for a while now, but I’m entirely unsure what everyone calls them down here.
Cute attempt, but Velcro/velcro has already been genericised for decades at this point. Nobody's going to move (back?) to "hook-and-loop," especially when the alternative rolls off the tongue a lot better.
That may not matter to Velcro (TM). As long as they're publicly making attempts to defend their trademark, perhaps that is enough for them to keep legal rights to it.
Surely you know from reading the article that it's actually "Velcro® Brand". It's easier to follow than most telenovelas. We get it, hook and loop isn’t in our everyday vocabulary, but calling it Velcro (TM) just wouldn’t be true.
> Nobody's going to move (back?) to "hook-and-loop," especially when the alternative rolls off the tongue a lot better.
Cynically, I wonder if they intentionally chose an alternative that they know is a dud. They clearly do benefit from people calling it Velcro, they just can’t have a trademark judge thinking that they want people to call it Velcro.
In any case, the video is quite fun and well done. If you take it as a marketing campaign without putting too much weight on the legal strategy, it’s smart and well-executed on their part.
> Nobody's going to move (back?) to "hook-and-loop," […]
I do, depending on the audience — I'm fine with hook-and-loop. In general I try to avoid generic trademarks whenever reasonable. In English this takes more effort; in Dutch this isn't too much of an issue. No native Dutch speaker would consider calling an 'ijsdweilmachine' a 'zamboni', for example. It seems that this is very much a US English thing to do.
Nah, it happens in Dutch too. Aspirine for example is commonly used for the generic medicine, even though it's a brand name. (Hell, it's sometimes even used as a general term for a light over-the-counter pain killer like paracetamol.)
TomTom is also sometimes used for general navigation systems, though that has been going downhill as fast as the company.
"Googlen" is used too in the general sense. Google does have a huge market share, so it's usually correct, but people do "google on Bing".
"Hook-and-loop" is a crappy name for it in English because it conveys an image of someone physically performing a hooking and looping action, like the old-timey hobby, latch hooking[0]. But the action you perform is really just either pressing together or pulling apart. The fact that the mechanism is comprised of tiny hooks and loops isn't really germane to how it works on a macro level. I quite like the "fur tape" mock suggestion in the second video.
Yeah. If someone was to say their clothes had hook-and-loop fastener, I would never think of velcro. I would think of the metal hooks and loops (or eyes) on bra straps, old jackets, dress pants, etc.
Similarly, many people who own vacuum cleaners which aren’t Hoover-branded still own hoovers and many chocolate and creme sandwich cookies which aren’t Oreo-branded are still oreos. I think some people in the US will refer to drinks which I call “soda” as “coke”. Like a “Sprite-coke” if you don’t want a cola.
This must be a page for VELCRO®’s lawyers to point to during relevant lawsuits because the argument otherwise seems like a lost cause.
I mean in most cases where a term becomes "generic" it has been long time generic before at some point someone bothers to make a study/lawsuit which declares it as generic as result.
For example pretty much everyone I know uses Lego as a generic term and knows about not Lego produced bricks. Currently Lego still managed to defend the trademark but IMHO it's just a matter of time until it becomes generic because it already defacto is and the only reason they still avoid it becoming generic is protectionism.
I live in a region where lots of people refer to most colas as "coke", but you bet if I start selling cola in a red can with "Coke" on it I'm going to have some lawyers showing up at my door.
This. I don't think that "coke" on its own can be trademarked because it's an actual common word (a form of coal). The trademark would have to be the word in combination with other aspects that make it distinctive. The color scheme, or font, or associated decorative elements, for instance.
"Coca-Cola", however, is distinctive on its own and is trademarkable as such.
> I don't think that "coke" on its own can be trademarked because it's an actual common word (a form of coal).
That wouldn’t be relevant unless you were actually talking about the form of coal.
Although many people say in shorthand that "[word] is trademarked.", trademarks are not “on a word” they’re on a particular use of a word. “coke” when referring to a beverage is mostly not a generic word. (Except maybe in the southern US :) )
For example "Apple" is trademarked in reference to computer hardware/software, etc. It isn't in reference to the fruit.
Trademarks are all about context. Exxon used to have a cartoon tiger as a mascot who sometimes looked a bit like Tony the Tiger. This was usually fine because the contexts were pretty different, one was for foods and one was for gasoline, radically different product markets. However, once Exxon started using their cartoon tiger mascot to sell the foods in the TigerMart convenience stores Kellog sued them and won.
If I go to a restaurant and ask for "Coke" they're not going to get confused and grab me some coal. I'd be pretty confused to open a red 12oz can that says Coke on it and find it full of coal dust. Nobody is confusing these products.
Yes. Xerox is one example of a company that succeeded with their marketing campaign in a lot of the world. I understand that in Australia one used to xerox documents, but now you certainly photocopy them. In India they still xerox documents.
Maybe. It’s an uphill battle, but if they start now at least they’ll be generating evidence in their favor for the inevitable trials to come. But it may be too late. Most companies that have done this successfully have started a bit earlier.
Genericide is the funniest myth copyright enforcement agencies ever invented. Common use has not "genericided" anything after the 50s except for intentionally litigious naming ("flip phone") or things comprised of hypergeneric terms like videotape. Kleenex and Hoover have not lost their trademarks despite widespread generic use by millions.
I fear that whilst velcroing items I will forget the need to not mention velcro as in to velcro or the thing velcro itself and the words the VELCRO™ lawyers said about not saying velcro will slip from my mind like poorly velcroed shoes.
Does anyone else think their use of velcro in casual conversation will be affected? Has anyone tried to use velcro and suffered any fall out? I might have to Google it.
Related, Google wrote a blog post[1] on a similar topic in 2006. As far as I know they've successfully avoided genericide and a 2017 lawsuit[2] ended with a ruling in their favor.
Also, unsurprisingly, Adobe has a whole section in their trademarks page about photoshopping[3]:
> Correct: The image was enhanced with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software.
In Ren & Stimpy comics, Powdered Toast Man always referred to the product for which he was named as Powdered Toast® or Powdered Toast™. I always took that as a hint that he pronounced the marks somehow.
Why the downvotes for such a simple, factual statement that answered the question? If you do an internet search for the phrase "C in circle" you'll find it is a quite common way to describe this symbol. On the Wikipedia talk page, someone mentioned hearing this description in their school textbooks which were recorded in an audio version. Way back when I volunteered for Recording for the Blind (now Learning Ally) I recall that this was also the designated way to read this symbol.
I think it's an inflection thing. You unnaturally emphasize the word, pause a bit, and try to fight back conveying incredulousness with your facial expression.
Silly-but-true answer: When I'm reading stuff like that aloud and wish to both be silly and make a point, I just read it as "registeredtrademark", very fast.
Serious answer: You don't. You just leave it out in speech.
> plaintiffs have failed to present sufficient evidence in this case to support a jury finding that the relevant public primarily understands the word "google" as a generic name for internet search engines and not as a mark identifying the Google search engine in particular.
I wonder what kind of evidence might actually be used. My lived experience has me telling people that I googled something despite my default search engine being DDG on all of my devices. One can’t really present the myriad spoken conversations which include this use as evidence in court, so what would they do?
Slightly aside: the “correct” examples that are given are always amusing but there’s something about Adobe’s double copyright symbol that hits me harder. That is too funny, not least because they’re 100% serious-face about it.
> I wonder what kind of evidence might actually be used.
IANAL, but perhaps the dividing line isn't whether or not the term is commonly used as a generic one, but whether people are not generally aware that it's a brand name. I wasn't aware that "Velcro" was a brand name for a long time, for instance.
I think the majority of people using "google" generically are also fully aware that "Google" is a brand name.
So the evidence would be some sort of study showing that people think it's really generic?
I think in Google's favor, their service is so utterly dominant[0] as a search engine that when someone asks you to google something they have a high expectation that it will be done on Google. As opposed to someone asking you to hoover up a mess but they don't really form an internal model of which vacuum cleaner you'll use, or asking to "borrow" a kleenex with no concern as to which brand of tissue you give them.
So even though you personally use DDG, surely there are still vastly more searches on Google than on all other search engines combined so there's no immediate danger of dilution.
I do have a question though for people familiar with trademark law. Why can't they just do away with the trademark dilution rule? So what if I want to go "rollerblading" on pair of K2s [1]? Why should Rollerblade be at risk of losing their trademark? Who is being served by this rule? It just seems to incentivize litigious behavior.
> I do have a question though for people familiar with trademark law. Why can't they just do away with the trademark dilution rule?
It’s not really a rule. It’s that genericization undermines the rationale for trademark protection.
Trademarks are granted to give a business exclusive use of an identifier in conjunction with a particular product or service in order to protect consumers from marketplace confusion.
For example, USPTO has granted a trademark for “iPhone” so that when consumers buy an “iPhone” they get what they expect. A phone made by Apple Inc. When people say “iPhone” they’re definitely talking about Apple Inc phones.
However, if consumers themselves don’t care, and they use a term to refer to any brand, even when they know it is from a different origin, then the word is no longer serving the purpose for which the trademark was granted.
Otis Elevator company doesn’t have a trademark on “Escalator” anymore because literally nobody cares what company manufactured the moving stairs they’re going up. Nobody is harmed, confused, or misled when other makes of moving stairs are called “escalators”.
Ironicly your example is one where Apple initially used someone else's trademarked brandname. IPhone had been initially owned and used by infogear and later was acquired by Cisco and used for a line of VoIP connected phones. Apple tried to negotiate a deal for the name but announced the Apple iPhone before they had actually finished negotiations over the name. Leading to a large legal battle that was eventually settled out of court where both companies were allowed to sell phones under the trademarked iPhone name.
The problem with replacing "googling" for me is that, as far as I can tell, no one has come up with any better term. I, like yourself, tend to use DDG mostly and would prefer not to say "googling", but saying "web searching" is more wordy and clumsy.
We really need to come up with another term that is more generic but just as snappy and easy to say as "googling".
> Correct: The image was enhanced with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software.
This makes me laugh every time I read it. Surely, even the lawyers at Adobe are fully aware that literally nobody is going to use that mouthful of a term (complete with ®s, even).
I always wonder why they didn't come up with a replacement that would actually have a chance.
Because they don't care whether people actually do it, nor is it realistic that they would. I'm sure the person who wrote that "correct" option made it that silly on purpose and laughed on pushing Publish.
> This makes me laugh every time I read it. Surely, even the lawyers at Adobe are fully aware that literally nobody is going to use that mouthful of a term (complete with ®s, even).
I guarantee you marketing teams at Adobe will use that term.
Be careful what you wish for. I've noticed that young people, who have to use Bing and Ecosia at school (or go straight to TikTok and rarely use search engines) no longer use Google as a verb. They say "search it up" instead of "Google it". Google (the word) is going from generic to specific/proprietary again.
> Us lawyers have to protect our people. Using the VELCRO® trademark properly allows us to protect the integrity of the VELCRO® Brand and our trademark rights, and protect consumers from purchasing products incorrectly identified as VELCRO® Brand products. It’s, you know, the right thing to do.
One of my least favourite thing is when massive corporations use this kind of cutesy language. To me, it brings to mind the wolf from Little Red Riding hood wearing her grandmother's clothes.
If the sentence was honest, it'd be something more like:
> Us lawyers are paid money to facilitate the VELCRO megacorp to make even more money. If you threaten the megacorp by misusing our trademark, we will sue you into the ground, no matter who you are, and regardless of whether it's the "right thing" or not.
174 comments
[ 6.1 ms ] story [ 206 ms ] threadI get it, but still, that's the law for you. The most of us will still say Velcro because it's what we all know it as.
Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...
Is this a uniquely US thing? In the UK, people always say "hoover" instead of "vacuum".
No, in Russia people have been xerring documents since photocopiers appeared there.
https://www.dicio.com.br/xerocar/ https://dicionario.priberam.org/xerocar
Xerox is a curious thing here. It is a so strong synonym to photocopy that almost no one remembers that it is a brand (at least, I don't remember seeing in person any Xerox device). It is so strong that xerox also means the shops were the photocopies are made.
Just place Google Maps over São Paulo, search for "xerox" and see what happens
Frigidaire and its abbreviated form frigo is the standard name for a refrigerator (nobody ever says "réfrigérateur").
Kleenex is the standard word meaning "paper handkerchief".
Sopalin is the standard word for "roll of paper towels".
Many automotive parts are called from a brand name too : "Delco" is the only name an igniter is ever called; a flexible black tube is always called a "Durit" whatever its brand.
A modular pre-made, stackable non permanent housing module is an "Algeco".
A bus stop with a roof is called an Abribus.
A supermarket trolley is almost always called a Caddie.
A credit card is universally called a "Carte Bleue" or CB, to the point that people will happily use the nonsensical "CB" acronym for a credit card when speaking English.
Cellophane is called Cellophane. I don't even know of an another word for it :)
- bic for a ball pen
- scotch for duct tape
- kalxon for a car honk
- rubalise for the white-and-red tape used in streets
- mobylette for that very specific old style scooter
- pédalo for the floating thingy on the beaches with pedals
As for cellophane I always called it "film plastique" or just "plastique", but this varies a lot from region to region and family to family.
As for Durit, it's actually a bit more interesting as the brand was genericised to "durite". It's so prevalent that we have expressions using it like "péter une durite" as a way to say "going crazy".
This floor is made of floor
Sure, it is also klaxon, cellophane and scotch.
Interesting, that champagne is the only case I know that won the fight. My friends often say sparkling wine for generic brands.
shaving razor -> gilete (instead of "lâmina de barbear")
chewing gum -> chiclete (instead of "goma de mascar")
cotton swab -> cotonete (a J&J brand, instead of "haste flexível")
polystyrene -> isopor (a Knauf brand, instead of "esferovite" or "poliestireno expandido")
During the 90s, Nintendo popularized the use of the term "game console" to avoid people's moms calling their competitors "Nintendos". Like Atari before them, their name had become synonymous with video games in general, something they wanted to avoid in order to protect their trademark.
There are references to "consoles" before this happened, dating back to the early 80s, but in everyday language most kids called them "video game systems" or by their brand names (Atari, Nintendo, Sega, etc.).
Does anyone know any people who actually called their consoles "Control Decks"?
Nintendo also referred to their cartridges as Game Paks, another term not used outside official Nintendo materials (including Nintendo Power). Everybody just called them cartridges, carts, or just games. It kind of reminds me of how Texas Instruments tried to get "Command Module" over as a term for their TI-99/4(A) cartridges. It didn't go over.
Oddly enough, the official TI-ism for the 99/4A unit itself was "console".
At this point it's more of a legend, but it goes that the word we use for toilet, унитаз, is the brand name of the company that sold toilets in 19th century.
Scotch is one brand of adhesive tape but we call all such tape "скотч".
Turns out judges used to be lawyers and are pretty good at reading between the lines, too.
Funnily enough, I've never seen a funny legal brief.
That being said, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote some funny opinions, but he was a literal Supreme Court Justice and could do as he pleased.
Surely you know from reading the article that it's actually "Velcro® Brand". It's easier to follow than most telenovelas. We get it, hook and loop isn’t in our everyday vocabulary, but calling it Velcro (TM) just wouldn’t be true.
Cynically, I wonder if they intentionally chose an alternative that they know is a dud. They clearly do benefit from people calling it Velcro, they just can’t have a trademark judge thinking that they want people to call it Velcro.
In any case, the video is quite fun and well done. If you take it as a marketing campaign without putting too much weight on the legal strategy, it’s smart and well-executed on their part.
I do, depending on the audience — I'm fine with hook-and-loop. In general I try to avoid generic trademarks whenever reasonable. In English this takes more effort; in Dutch this isn't too much of an issue. No native Dutch speaker would consider calling an 'ijsdweilmachine' a 'zamboni', for example. It seems that this is very much a US English thing to do.
TomTom is also sometimes used for general navigation systems, though that has been going downhill as fast as the company.
"Googlen" is used too in the general sense. Google does have a huge market share, so it's usually correct, but people do "google on Bing".
[0] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4MDeHa_1C-w
It won’t work, but legally if they don’t make an effort then they lose it by default.
This must be a page for VELCRO®’s lawyers to point to during relevant lawsuits because the argument otherwise seems like a lost cause.
They're trying to avoid genericide. I think if they didn't do this, they could actually lose the trademark.
I mean in most cases where a term becomes "generic" it has been long time generic before at some point someone bothers to make a study/lawsuit which declares it as generic as result.
For example pretty much everyone I know uses Lego as a generic term and knows about not Lego produced bricks. Currently Lego still managed to defend the trademark but IMHO it's just a matter of time until it becomes generic because it already defacto is and the only reason they still avoid it becoming generic is protectionism.
After all there are regions where all soda is called “coke” and that trademark hasn’t been lost.
"Coca-Cola", however, is distinctive on its own and is trademarkable as such.
That wouldn’t be relevant unless you were actually talking about the form of coal.
Although many people say in shorthand that "[word] is trademarked.", trademarks are not “on a word” they’re on a particular use of a word. “coke” when referring to a beverage is mostly not a generic word. (Except maybe in the southern US :) )
For example "Apple" is trademarked in reference to computer hardware/software, etc. It isn't in reference to the fruit.
https://www.gerbenlaw.com/trademarks/food-companies/coca-col...
Trademarks are all about context. Exxon used to have a cartoon tiger as a mascot who sometimes looked a bit like Tony the Tiger. This was usually fine because the contexts were pretty different, one was for foods and one was for gasoline, radically different product markets. However, once Exxon started using their cartoon tiger mascot to sell the foods in the TigerMart convenience stores Kellog sued them and won.
https://www.forbes.com/2000/10/17/1017forbes500.html?sh=6a04...
If I go to a restaurant and ask for "Coke" they're not going to get confused and grab me some coal. I'd be pretty confused to open a red 12oz can that says Coke on it and find it full of coal dust. Nobody is confusing these products.
We call it klittenband.. tangle band. Or tangle strip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...
I fear that whilst velcroing items I will forget the need to not mention velcro as in to velcro or the thing velcro itself and the words the VELCRO™ lawyers said about not saying velcro will slip from my mind like poorly velcroed shoes.
Does anyone else think their use of velcro in casual conversation will be affected? Has anyone tried to use velcro and suffered any fall out? I might have to Google it.
Also, unsurprisingly, Adobe has a whole section in their trademarks page about photoshopping[3]:
> Correct: The image was enhanced with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software.
> Incorrect: The image was photoshopped.
[1]: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/do-you-google.html
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_litigation#Genericide_o...
[3]: https://www.adobe.com/legal/permissions/trademarks.html
Dumb question: how would you pronounce this if you were saying it ? Specifically the ® symbol ?
Serious answer: You don't. You just leave it out in speech.
Ridiculous.
> plaintiffs have failed to present sufficient evidence in this case to support a jury finding that the relevant public primarily understands the word "google" as a generic name for internet search engines and not as a mark identifying the Google search engine in particular.
I wonder what kind of evidence might actually be used. My lived experience has me telling people that I googled something despite my default search engine being DDG on all of my devices. One can’t really present the myriad spoken conversations which include this use as evidence in court, so what would they do?
Slightly aside: the “correct” examples that are given are always amusing but there’s something about Adobe’s double copyright symbol that hits me harder. That is too funny, not least because they’re 100% serious-face about it.
IANAL, but perhaps the dividing line isn't whether or not the term is commonly used as a generic one, but whether people are not generally aware that it's a brand name. I wasn't aware that "Velcro" was a brand name for a long time, for instance.
I think the majority of people using "google" generically are also fully aware that "Google" is a brand name.
So the evidence would be some sort of study showing that people think it's really generic?
So even though you personally use DDG, surely there are still vastly more searches on Google than on all other search engines combined so there's no immediate danger of dilution.
I do have a question though for people familiar with trademark law. Why can't they just do away with the trademark dilution rule? So what if I want to go "rollerblading" on pair of K2s [1]? Why should Rollerblade be at risk of losing their trademark? Who is being served by this rule? It just seems to incentivize litigious behavior.
[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share (note that they easily beat all other search engines combined
[1] https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health-products/g46167391/b... (Good Housekeeping has no problem genericizing rollerblade all throughout this article. Perhaps unlike Velcro, Nordica is ok with this?)
It’s not really a rule. It’s that genericization undermines the rationale for trademark protection.
Trademarks are granted to give a business exclusive use of an identifier in conjunction with a particular product or service in order to protect consumers from marketplace confusion.
For example, USPTO has granted a trademark for “iPhone” so that when consumers buy an “iPhone” they get what they expect. A phone made by Apple Inc. When people say “iPhone” they’re definitely talking about Apple Inc phones.
However, if consumers themselves don’t care, and they use a term to refer to any brand, even when they know it is from a different origin, then the word is no longer serving the purpose for which the trademark was granted.
Otis Elevator company doesn’t have a trademark on “Escalator” anymore because literally nobody cares what company manufactured the moving stairs they’re going up. Nobody is harmed, confused, or misled when other makes of moving stairs are called “escalators”.
We really need to come up with another term that is more generic but just as snappy and easy to say as "googling".
This makes me laugh every time I read it. Surely, even the lawyers at Adobe are fully aware that literally nobody is going to use that mouthful of a term (complete with ®s, even).
I always wonder why they didn't come up with a replacement that would actually have a chance.
I guarantee you marketing teams at Adobe will use that term.
One of my least favourite thing is when massive corporations use this kind of cutesy language. To me, it brings to mind the wolf from Little Red Riding hood wearing her grandmother's clothes.
If the sentence was honest, it'd be something more like:
> Us lawyers are paid money to facilitate the VELCRO megacorp to make even more money. If you threaten the megacorp by misusing our trademark, we will sue you into the ground, no matter who you are, and regardless of whether it's the "right thing" or not.
>Correct: I just bought some self-fastening shoes!
I will never say that
My n=1 experience is that when shopping for "hook and loop" strips online, I make sure that they are actual Velcro.
Beyond useless, I think that the attempt is misguided.