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Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

you never "photoshop" a picture, right? -- I have to imagine there is an endless struggle between marketing and legal on these types of things

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http://www.adobe.com/misc/trade.html#section-4

Hilarious!

Trademarks are not verbs.

Correct: The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software.

Incorrect: The image was photoshopped.

IIRC there was actually some talk of Adobe legal stepping in to stop the use of the term "photoshop" for editing an image.

For obvious reason it went no-where.

Here? http://www.adobe.com/misc/trade.html#section-4

Incorrect: The image was photoshopped.

Correct: The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software.

They have sent letters to people using "photoshop" as a verb, especially in a general context where it's not clear that Adobe Photoshop is the editing software.

Bic (pens) write to stop people using Bic instead of ballpoint. (Very successfully it seems, that's not a use I'm aware of.)

Hoover try to stop people using hoover as a verb too.

Google used to try to stop people using "google it" to mean "web search it".

They have to try to protect the mark, otherwise there's no point them having it.

IIRC 'bic' is used primarily in France.

These companies trying to stop the use of their name seem crazy to me (unless they are 'complaining' just to get some more press). So much promotion.

But it can lead to the loss of the trademark if it becomes a common word. Anyone can brand their product with it.

This happened (or at least went to court) with Hoover in the UK I think. Hoover had become the generic term for a Vacuum Cleaner and so any company could make and sell products described as Hoovers (or at least it was an open legal question).

This means it is far from crazy to defend a trademark from generic use.

in Poland instead of 'hoover' it was 'electrolux'. some seniors people call it so to this day. 'bic' was also popular in Brazil.

There is no danger of these companies losing their trademark, anymore than Apple the iPhone maker is in danger of losing its trademark either because the term Apple is associated with other commercial products, e.g., Beatles records or because it is also a common word.

The companies are worried about loss of "uniqueness" (aka. "trademark dilution"), which is a special form of protection that famous and unambiguous trademarks get. Now that the Google trademark is considered unique, you can't start a Gourmet Google Goulash restaurant, even though there is no risk of consumers being confused about who they are dealing with. The law is worried that Google's brand strength might be diluted by their brand managers not having the stage completely to themselves.

I think this whole area of law is fairly recent - Wikipedia says it grew out of anti-cybersquatting efforts in the mid 1990s.

Then you'll be surprised to learn that these were once trademarks:

- Aspirin - Escalator - Yo-yo - Zipper

Zipper was a trademark?! I need a kleenex, and maybe a band-aid, and a ziploc to put the waste in :-(

don't forget to clean your ears out with a q-tip!

Ah, you are right. Though Aspirin is not like the others: Bayer lost its intellectual property in the Treaty of Versailles.

Trademark dilution is different. You can lose the ability to enforce trademarks that become the generic word to refer to things, on the reasoning that people shouldn't be able to have monopolies over the basic usages of language.

Trademark erosion/dilution can apparently render the trademark invalid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark#Trademark_er...

This is why average consumers can't tell the difference between an "iPhone" and a Samsung phone -- they use the name of a popular instance of a thing to refer to all instances. A soda is a Coke, a tissue is a Kleenex, a photocopy is a Xerox, an acetaminophen is a Tylenol, an ibuprofen is an Advil, etc.

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