🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <716101727.10647@zooid.guild.org> ron@zooid.guild.org (Secret Mud) writes:
>
>Kleenex (and Xerox) may be holding on for the moment--but only by sternly
>policing any generic usage of their trademark.  A large number of common words
>used to be trademarked, but lost that protection when they entered into
>common usage for any similar generic product:  Dry Ice, Escalator, Brassiere,
>mimeograph, and zipper--all of these used to be trademarked names.

Also Phonograph, which was a trademark owned by Thos A Edison Inc. to
describe their line of talking machines.  Talking machine was the
generic term up until sometime after the turn of the century.
Gramophone was also used generically in the US around the turn of the
century (and still is in Britain).  It was a trademark of the
Berliner Talking Machine Company (a predicessor of Victor, as mentioned
in my previous post).  The "phonograph" in "His Master's Voice" is a
Berliner Gramophone.

Other examples: Videotape (Ampex), Teletype (Teletype Corp), Blender
(Waring Corp), Flipper (on a pinball machine -D. Gottlieb & Co.), etc...


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