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This is called trademark erosion. An example of this historically would be aspirin, which was originally a trademarked brand name of Bayer but was legally ruled

• solinent 7y ago
  The standard example I've heard is for Trampoline. No one calls them rebound tumblers anymore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trampoline#First_modern_trampolines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trampoline#First_modern_trampo... I think this is really just a case of lawyers being super-protective. It also pays well, I'm sure. I think a words like Humvee or even Google have coloquially already lost their meaning--their meaning is polymorphic, it's only a matter of time (100 years is a matter of time) before a better Humvee or Google not released by the original product designer comes along that people will call Humvee or Google anyways.
  • Swizec 7y ago
    Trader Joe’s makes the best kleenex. And my iPhone captures the best kodak moments. I also enjoy facetiming via Slack. And of course googling for music is best done on Spotify.
    • oliveshell 7y ago
      Haha, yep. Personally, my friends and I have been skype-ing through Discord a lot recently.
    • mnemonicsloth 7y ago
      Hardly anybody remembers nowadays but Elevators and Fridges used to be brand names (of the Otis Elevator company and Frigidaire, respectively). So the endpoint of nobody remembering that your IP is IP has been reached in practice. And more recently there's the PC, which became detached from IBM in record time.
      • thaumasiotes 7y ago
        > Elevators and Fridges used to be brand names (of the Otis Elevator company and Frigidaire, respectively) There's no real reason to think "fridge" is shortened from "Frigidaire" as opposed to "refrigerator".
        • Talanes 7y ago
          And plenty of reason to think against. The "dg" sound doesn't come through in "Frigidaire" at all. It does have an actual letter "d" present, but with the "i" in between the sound becomes entirely different. Compare to refrigerator, where the "frige" portion of the word slants easily to rhyme with "ridge."
          • thaumasiotes 7y ago
            I can't go that far. What country are you from? I would have said the second syllable of "refrigerator", and the first syllable of "Frigidaire", both obligatorily rhyme with "ridge". There's no alternative. "Frigidaire" should only really differ from "frigid air" in terms of prosody.
            • pmachinery 7y ago
              I think they're assuming Frigidaire is pronounced with a hard G, which is fair enough if you haven't heard it spoken before.
              • Talanes 7y ago
                I'm actually assuming it pronounced with a more enunciated J sound than other poster accents seem to. I've always heard frigid with the emphasis on the "J" sound, rather than the softer blended j sound that produces the "dg" blend.
  • baq 7y ago
    I’ve always liked escalators and xerox machines.
    • SahAssar 7y ago
      On xerox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbqAMEwtOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbqAMEwtOE
    • Angostura 7y ago
      Not to mention Heroine.
      • CapitalistCartr 7y ago
        I think you mean Heroin, the opioid drug, rather than heroine, a female hero. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero
  • MereInterest 7y ago
    Wikipedia has a good list of trademarks in various states of becoming generic. It's interesting to read and think how silly it is how many terms still have protection despite not having any mental association with a particular company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...
  • cosmodisk 7y ago
    The very first that came to my mind is Jeep. In some countries it literally means SUV nowadays.The term is so ingrained that pretty much everyone says like this: 'He's got a BMW Jeep' or 'Look, that's a nice looking Jeep, surely it's Mercedes!'. The funniest thing is that nobody can ever see a real Jeep anymore,as nobody buys them( talking about Europe here).
    • thatguy0900 7y ago
      Interesting, I've never heard jeep used like that in the U.S. Actual jeeps are pretty common here though.
      • malkia 7y ago
        Born in Bulgaria, can confirm - "Джип", or "Джипка" which is really "Jeep" in bulgarian (and probably other slavic languages). Another one is "Yonica" for any synthesizer. Obviously "Scotch" (more for the tape, than drink). But... What I really love is "Pampers" - yes this is the bulgarian word for... "diapers"... and many more...
        • tdsamardzhiev 7y ago
          Don't forget "Xerox"
          • ForHackernews 7y ago
            Amusing and relevant: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/opinion/verbatim-what-is-a-photocopier.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/opinion/verbatim-what-is-...
        • cosmodisk 7y ago
          We've got it more or less the same in Lithuania with a lot of brands. "Pampers" is the default name for nappies. "Scotch" and "Xerox" are popular in Slavic languages,we never picked these up for some reason. Here,in the UK, the more popular ones are: Stanley Knife( any retractable knife) or Hoover( Vacuum cleaner).
  • _jal 7y ago
    Here is Velcro's lawyers telling you to call those other brands 'hook and loop' in a surprisingly straightforward, honest and amusing way. https://youtu.be/rRi8LptvFZY https://youtu.be/rRi8LptvFZY
    • jacobush 7y ago
      Straightforward and amusing, yes. Honest? Well, they are paid to be "honest". Excuse while me while I go buy some hook and loop.
• bonestamp2 7y ago
  > It doesn't apply in this case because the Call of Duty series has nothing to do with selling vehicles. I understand that the trademark itself is only protected within the same field, but it seems pretty common to defend trademarks across other fields.
  • dsr_ 7y ago
    That sentence doesn't make sense to me. A trademark can only be defended in the face of an incursion into a protected use. If it's an "other field", then it can't be defended and the suit fails.
    • bonestamp2 7y ago
      Fair enough and technically, I think you're right that it's not a "defense" with legal precedence (and therefore not an actual defense). But, I don't think that reality stops many companies from trying to stop the use of their brand or product in other fields because they believe they're protecting the brand. That said, this AM General case seems to be a licensing case -- they want money for the use of the of their design. To some degree, I don't blame them since Activision is profiting from their work.
      • dsr_ 7y ago
        Suppose Activision sets a game in Los Angeles. A crucial mission involves a running battle down Hollywood Boulevard. Should Graumann's Chinese Theater be entitled to money for the use of the appearance of their famous building? To what extent should Google pay AM General, Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, and so forth for the use of their vehicles' appearances in Streetview? Finally: someone makes a Mail Simulator game, in which you take the role of being a first-class letter trying to get to a particular house on the other side of the continent. The role of postal vehicle is played by a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV How much do they owe to Grumman, or to the USPS, or GM?
        • jmalicki 7y ago
• YokoZar 7y ago
  Aspirin didn't become generic because Bayer "took no action", it became generic because the trademark was surrendered as an explicit term in the Treaty of Versailles. Most trademarks these days don't need to worry about being the literal spoils of war.
  • neilparikh 7y ago
    Bayer lost their trademark because Treaty of Versailles, but it became generic later in a court case due to lack of action. Edit: Actually, I think Bayer lost it even earlier, during the war, through the Trading with the Enemy Act.