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Subject:Trademarks as modifiers, not nouns From:Mark Levinson <mark -at- SD -dot- CO -dot- IL> Date:Thu, 1 Jun 1995 10:59:11 IDT
I'd be interested to know if
there is a general style guide that addresses the issue.
** It's a widespread policy, founded on the fear that if you use
your trademark as a noun, you may invite a challenge to the
legitimacy of the trademark.
For example, suppose you've invented the Piglatinizer, which
you attach to your TV set to translate programs automatically
into Pig Latin. When your patent on this wildly popular invention
runs out, Philco decides to market a similar product and also call
it a Piglatinizer. You say "but that's my trademark." They say,
"But you can't monopolize the only noun available to describe
this thing." And a court could agree with them. If to begin with
you had called your invention "the Piglatinizer realtime television
translator system," then you could demonstrate to the court that
your trademark does not need to be taken away from you in order to
describe the whole general class of products like yours.
The issue has come up in real life with trademarks like Kleenex,
Thermos, and Zipper.
__________________________________________________________________________
||- Mark L. Levinson, mark -at- sd -dot- co -dot- il -- Box 5780, 46157 Herzlia, Israel -||
|| - Death to fanatics! - ||
