When Proprietary Eponym Become Product Name

Do you know what is  hydrogenated vegetable oil ? Probably difficult to define but if I say Dalda, you will immediately say oh yes I know it is hydrogenated vegetable oil or simply Vanaspati Gee ! I still recollect, people used to go for shopping during sixties or seventies and ask local bania to give Rath Dalda or Panghat Dalda instead of Rath Vanaspati Gee or Panghat Ghee. The list is endless all washing powders are called Surf, photo copy as Xerox. The term is exactly called proprietary eponym or simply a generic trademark. Over the time , a brand can be so famous and so ubiquitious that the people associate that with action! And everyday usage people start using that term.

When you need to blow your nose, there is a good chance you ask for a Kleenex, even if a box being handed over to you does not bear the Kimberly-Clark owned Kleenex logo. Same is the case of Velcro, Fevicol and Chapstick. But what about escalator? Or dumpster ? Linoleum, zipper, trampoline... all these are (or once were) trademarks of companies whose products were so successful that they came to represent an entire category of product. And it can actually cause quite a problem for those companies.

You may think nothing of it when you ask for a band-Aid to cover up a cut or scrape. But a company like Johnson & Johnson, which makes the world's most famous brand of adhesive bandage, might have reason to worry because-theoritically, anyway-the degree of easy familiarity could put it in jeopardy of loosing its trademark!

The trademark experts feel that when something become so pervasive in everyday society as a result of its own fame, there is an argument that it no longer represent the brand rather it represent the action. So as a result of that, in most of the countries as per the trademark law, you can not trademark things that are descriptive or generic in nature.

It happened in USA with Bayer Company, they lost its trademark for Aspirin to now the experts call 'genericide'. It is a old 1921 case, that set the table for the modern standard that the courts currently follows : If a brand name is understood by the public to refer broadly to a category of goods or services rather than that the brand;s specific good or service, a company may be at risk of loosing its trademark. It has happened with Escalator, Cellophane and Laundromat also, all of them lost their trade mark status. Words are the ones susceptible to being genericized, because there is no other way to describe it. It is  possible for a company to recapture a trademark if it can get consumers to associate the name with product rather than the product category at large.

In fact many big companies carried out advertising campaigns to let the public be aware that their name is actually a trademark, Xerox came up which literally said if the trademark is misused, it could be undone.. please help us ensue it does not. Xerox still has its trademarks, so do Rollerblade and Clorox, both have also come up with similar ad campaigns. Velcro even come up with a music video about it.

It is a paradox that brands with fanciful names that does not otherwise exist in common language have stronger cases for applying for a trademark. But this strength can become a weakness when it come to protecting the trademarks against genericization.

Ultimately, it is unlikely that you care about intellectual property of large corporations, and you will probably keep saying 'Kleenex' when you really just want a tissue. But those companies are fighting hard for that to make sure you do not !