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In colloquial North American English "Legos" is pretty common. The effort to get people to not use the form "Legos" seems to originate from branding. The Lego c
by mchaver 11y ago
In colloquial North American English "Legos" is pretty common. The effort to get people to not use the form "Legos" seems to originate from branding. The Lego company does not want "Lego" to refer to all brick toys, much the way that Kleenex does not want "kleenex" to mean any paper tissue. Anyway, pushing for "proper usage" is an uphill battle ;)
- tokai 11y ago"The Lego company does not want "Lego" to refer to all brick toys, much the way that Kleenex does not want "kleenex" to mean any paper tissue." I do not believe this at all. Being the default word for its category is the truest sign of the penetration of a brand.
- snaily 11y agoEven so, a company will want to avoid losing the trademark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark#Avoiding_genericization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark#Avoiding_gen... (Lego is one of the examples as a success story for this approach)
- ArekDymalski 11y agohttp://www.outsidethebeltway.com/google-doesnt-want-people-using-google-as-a-verb/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/google-doesnt-want-people-u... Companies seem to think different about this.
- rbobby 11y agoLego the company was fiercely protective of their IP. They had a patent they regularly enforced. Once the patent expired they took MegaBlocks to court trying to claim the shape of their bricks was trademarked (they lost this... but took it all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court).
- mseebach 11y agoIt's also a sign that you're becoming a commodity which is bad for business. You can Xerox your document on a Canon, but you can't Google something on Bing.
- mchaver 11y agoHere is a specific example of them requesting customers to help protect the brand by not calling them "legos". http://english.stackexchange.com/a/47223 http://english.stackexchange.com/a/47223
- jameshart 11y agoTo British ears, it just sounds wrong. It sets off our grammar sensors, not our trademark infringement sensors. It's absolutely not a complaint about genericisation of the Lego brand. "I need more legos to finish off this house" sounds, to a Brit, like someone saying "I need more sands to finish off this sandcastle," or "I need more ices to finish this ice sculpture". Lego is kind of like a substance in our language. Pluralizing it is just wrong.