> Failing to sue someone is not cause for cancellation of registered marks. Not quite. Thermos, escalator, and cellophane became generic terms, free for anyone

> Failing to sue someone is not cause for cancellation of registered marks. Not quite. Thermos, escalator, and cellophane became generic terms, free for anyone to use, because everyone started using them and the trademark owners didn't try to stop them. [0] That's why Xerox famously advertised that we should say that we made a Xerox copy of a document, not that we xeroxed it. (Aspirin also became generic, and thus free for anyone to use, in the U.S., but that's because the trademark was seized from its German owner, Bayer AG, as part of reparations after World War I. [1] Aspirin is still a trademark of Bayer in most of the rest of the world.) [0] https://www.inta.org/INTABulletin/Pages/ASPIRINBrandorAspirinTabletsAvoidingtheGenericideHeadacheintheUnitedStates.aspx https://www.inta.org/INTABulletin/Pages/ASPIRINBrandorAspiri... [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-09-13-fi-38019-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-09-13-fi-38019-...