Saving your Mark from Trademark Genericide
Today, several generic terms that we use, such as ‘escalator,’ ‘xerox,’ ‘cellophane,’ sound common but were once protected as trademarks. How have then they become generic terms? In the Trademark Law context, genericide, or the conversion of a trademark into a generic phrase, occurs when a trademark becomes the generic word for the product or service with which it is associated.
What is Genericide of a Trademark? Genericide of a trademark occurs when it is reduced to a common term identifying a category of products. Simply put, trademark genericization is the death of the mark as it no longer acts as a source indicator of the brand owner. A wide array of linguistic, legal, and marketing-related factors contribute to trademark genericization. Sadly, targets of genericization are often successful brands whose goods were or are market leaders in their sector. In a typical example of trademark genericide, a brand owner invests in promotional strategies to popularize his brand, hoping to make the product a frontrunner in its category. The brand then becomes not only successful but also ends up becoming slang to mean the entire product category. Consumers stop referring to the trademark as a proper noun for the brand owner’s product but refer to it as a common noun to mean a product category.