I remember learning that trademarks that have been genericized (like Band-Aid, Popsicle, Velcro, Clorox, etc) are at risk of losing their trademark or copyright.

Can someone explain to me how exactly does this work? Cause i never really understood this

  • yogurt@lemmy.world
    2·
    17 hours ago

    Trademarks aren’t supposed to be a gift to the company, they’re a service to the public to help them know what they’re buying so they don’t get tricked into buying a counterfeit. If nobody expects velcro to come from one specific manufacturer anymore, that trademark isn’t serving the public and there’s no reason for it to be protected.

    The Band-Aid company really really wants people to go to the store to buy some band-aids, but then only one box says “Band-Aid” on it so they buy that one because they don’t know what “adhesive bandages” are. They love that, it’s just illegal. So they have to make sure to run enough “BAND-AID™ BRAND ADHESIVE BANDAGES” ads to have a defense in court that no reasonable person is buying Band-Aid because they think that’s the only band-aid in the store. But they still want as many unreasonable people doing that as possible.

  • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
    6·
    1 day ago

    A trademark is a distinct way to refer to a business. The whole set of legal rights and privileges that this weird form of intellectual property gets are to make sure that when somebody talks about " dome guys tacos" they’re definitely talking about my tacos and not yours or some other persons.

    If I let dumb guys tacos become a generic term that I don’t say hey, that’s not talking about my tacos anymore. Don’t do that then I’ve let my trademark become generic. This is unlikely to happen to actual tacos but if I had come up with a brand new pseudo taco dish and I called it the DCT, and then every Mexican restaurant in the country copied it and also called it the DCT, then the idea has become genericized and I can’t. Then at the end of it start trying to collect money from other people for calling the thing I invented and failed to produce by the name that has been attached to it.

    This is of course entirely apart from the menu of how to create a DCT, we should be covered by copyright, or the specific set of instructions on how to create a DCT, which hypothetically I could get a patent on. (Although I don’t think they award patents for food.)