Trademark

From Wikinvestor

A trademark registration is renewable. If a trademark owner wishes to do so, he may maintain a registration indefinitely by paying renewal fees, using the trademark and defending the registration.

However, a trademark or brand can become unenforceable if it becomes the generic term for a particular type of product or service — a process called "genericide." If a mark undergoes genericide, people are using the term generically, not as a trademark to exclusively identify the particular source of the product or service. One famous example is "thermos" in the United States.

Because trademarks are registered with governments, some countries or trademark registries may recognize a mark, while others may have determined that it is generic and not allowable as a trademark in that registry. For example, the drug "acetylsalicylic acid" (2-acetoxybenzoic acid) is better known as aspirin in the United States — a generic term. In Canada, however, "aspirin" is still a trademark of the German company Bayer. Bayer lost the trademark after World War I, when the mark was sold to an American firm. So many copy-cat products entered the marketplace during the war that it was deemed generic just three years later.

Terms can be deemed "generic" in two ways. First, any potential mark can be deemed "generic" by a trademark registry, that refuses to register it. In this instance, the term has no secondary meaning that helps consumers identify the source of the product; the term serves no function as a "mark". Second, a mark, already in use, may be deemed generic by a court or registry after the mark is challenged as generic — this is known as "genericide". In this instance, the term previously had a secondary meaning, but lost its source-identifying function.

To avoid "genericide", a trademark owner must balance between trying to dominate the market, and dominating their market to such an extent that their product name defines the market. A manufacturer who invents an amazing breakthrough product which cannot be succinctly described in plain English (for example, a vacuum-insulated drinking flask) will likely find its product described by the trademark ("Thermos"). If the product continues to dominate the market, eventually the trademark will become generic ("thermos").

Trademarks currently thought to be in danger of being generic include iPod, Jell-O, Band-Aid, Rollerblade, Google, Spam, Hoover, and Sheetrock. G

When a trademark becomes generic, it is as if the mark were in the public domain.