3 ms·

Marks become genericized when the consumer's mind uses the mark as a word for the category rather than as a specific product/line/company. Wouldn't that be fac

Marks become genericized when the consumer's mind uses the mark as a word for the category rather than as a specific product/line/company. Wouldn't that be facilitated by consumers seeing other companies/products in the category using the same/similar name (hence my (1))? Admittedly, consumers may spontaneously expand the meaning of a word (e.g. "google" as a verb for "to search") without a competitor having encroached upon it. If Microsoft ran "Use Bing to google what you are looking for" ads and Google didn't protest, would a court really give that no weight (as an admission that Google had accepted it being generic) if Google brought a trademark case against some other party in the future? Of course, Doz and Moz are different words, and that may be a critical point.

masklinn 13y ago
> Wouldn't that be facilitated by consumers seeing other companies/products in the category using the same/similar name (hence my (1))? Maybe, but I don't know of any occurrence of that. > Admittedly, consumers may spontaneously expand the meaning of a word (e.g. "google" as a verb for "to search") As far as I know, that's what happened every single time so far. > If Microsoft ran "Use Bing to google what you are looking for" ads and Google didn't protest, would a court really give that no weight (as an admission that Google had accepted it being generic) if Google brought a trademark case against some other party in the future? No but that's a very different case, that'd be Microsoft very specifically using it as a genericized mark which is a very different case than trademark dilution or confusion or whatever moz argues they're suffering from. (and Google could actually do that to themselves by talking about googling stuff ("Escalator" was originally a mark of Otis, but the way Otis used them in their ads e.g. explaining that they offered "the latest in elevator and escalator design" made the trademark office conclude that they used it generically and scrap the mark))
jack-r-abbit 13y ago
I don't think Kleenex got generalized because other tissue companies named themselves Fleenex and Gleenex. Or Band-aid because of Land-aid and Gland-aid. They became generalized because they were popular in their category and then any old knock-off (what ever the name) was the same to consumers.

masklinn 13y ago

> Wouldn't that be facilitated by consumers seeing other companies/products in the category using the same/similar name (hence my (1))? Maybe, but I don't know of any occurrence of that. > Admittedly, consumers may spontaneously expand the meaning of a word (e.g. "google" as a verb for "to search") As far as I know, that's what happened every single time so far. > If Microsoft ran "Use Bing to google what you are looking for" ads and Google didn't protest, would a court really give that no weight (as an admission that Google had accepted it being generic) if Google brought a trademark case against some other party in the future? No but that's a very different case, that'd be Microsoft very specifically using it as a genericized mark which is a very different case than trademark dilution or confusion or whatever moz argues they're suffering from. (and Google could actually do that to themselves by talking about googling stuff ("Escalator" was originally a mark of Otis, but the way Otis used them in their ads e.g. explaining that they offered "the latest in elevator and escalator design" made the trademark office conclude that they used it generically and scrap the mark))

jack-r-abbit 13y ago

I don't think Kleenex got generalized because other tissue companies named themselves Fleenex and Gleenex. Or Band-aid because of Land-aid and Gland-aid. They became generalized because they were popular in their category and then any old knock-off (what ever the name) was the same to consumers.