GENERICIZATION OF

TRADEMARKS

Trademark

A distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organisation or legal entity to identify products or services to consumers. It can be a name, a design, a logo , a phrase or a combination of these.

A Brand Name is an important and valuable asset of an enterprise which identifies it from various other competitors.

A Genericized trademark is a trademark or brand name that has become the colloquial or generic description for or synonymous with a general class of goods or services.

    Genericized trademarks are former brand names  once legally protected as trademarks, which have since come to signify a generic product regardless of its manufacturer.

Need for Study

To identify reasons for trademarks becoming Genericized brands

To suggest various strategies to protect Trademarks from becoming Genericized Trademarks

WALKMAN :

- It is trademarked for personal audio recorder or hand held portable cassette player by SONY of Japan.

- In 2002 Sony lost its trademark in Austria and has also been removed from the registers of most of the countries

HOOVER :

A vacuum cleaner by The Hoover Company. It lost its trademark in the UK.

A vacuum cleaner (sometimes referred to as a Hoover, a genericized trademark) is a device that uses an air pump to create a ……………..

Google is worried about the genericization of its name which means that it doesn't want its trademark to become generic in meaning.

“ To GOOGLE or not to “

Google claims that the overuse of the word Google as a verb will lead to "Googling" being the generic term for "searching the Internet with a search engine"

Reasons

Use of a trademark as a ‘verb’ or ‘noun’ .Use of Descriptive brand names by companies.Innovative product names are prone to become genericized names because of lack of alternative terms or names to describe the product.Lack of proper promotional strategy.Illiterate customers.

The process through which a trademark becomes generic is sometimes called “trademark dilution” or “Genericide.”

Most companies want to avoid this, as it weakens the power of their product in the market.

Example- Because the term “band-aid” has become generic, the company which makes Band-Aid brand bandages may lose customers to other companies which use the company's trademark.

A genericized trademark can kill a company's profits if it is not dealt with

Measures to Protect your Trademark

Restrict use of Descriptive Brand names. For innovative products it is essential to

differentiate between product category and Trademark

Suffix the Trademark with the word ‘Brand’

By marketing efforts and by discouraging publishers

In 1921 after the First World War, Bayer lost the trademark for the word ASPRIN.

Butterscotch, originally a trademark of Parkinsons Thermos, originally a trademark of Thermos

GmbH Yo-yo, originally a trademark of Duncan Yo-Yo

Company Zipper, originally a trademark of B.F. Goodrich Lego - Interlocking plastic building blocks 'LEGO

blocks' or 'toys' and not 'LEGOs‘.

ESCALATOR A conveyor transport device

Trademarked in 1900 by Charles Seeberger of Otis Elevator Co.

In 1950 it lost its exclusive right over the word ‘Escalator’

The general public viewed it as a moving staircase

All trademark protections were removed

XEROX•Founded in 1906 by Haloid Photographic Co.

•Name changed to Haloid Xerox in 1958

•Then the name was changed to ‘XEROX’ in 1961

•The Co. feels concerned about the use of xerox as a verb and thus this increases chances of the brand turning into a generic brand

•Ongoing advertising and media campaign to convince public

• “ You cannot Xerox a document, you can copy it on a Xerox brand copying machine”

•Oxford English Dictionary still uses ‘xerox’ as a verb

•Kaccha Mango Bite by Parle Agro Co. used the tagline –

“Kachhe aam ka xerox “

This after intervention was changed to

“Kachhe aam ka Copy “

THANK YOU