I absolutely agree. In some countries, those kind of trademarks don't fly, precisely because of common word usage (e.g. here in Germany). OTOH, in the USA, if a

I absolutely agree. In some countries, those kind of trademarks don't fly, precisely because of common word usage (e.g. here in Germany). OTOH, in the USA, if a term becomes "genericized" it enters public domain[1], something that couldn't happen here, so that also has its perks... Gawd, how I would love to see Apple lose their trademark... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark