Generic trademark in the context of Linoleum


Generic trademark in the context of Linoleum

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⭐ Core Definition: Generic trademark

A generic trademark, also known as a genericized trademark or proprietary eponym, is a trademark or brand name that, because of its popularity or significance, has become the generic term for, or synonymous with, a general class of products, services, or actions usually against the intentions of the trademark's owner.

A trademark is prone to genericization, or "genericide", when a brand name acquires substantial market dominance or mind share, becoming so widely used for similar products or services that it is no longer associated with the trademark owner, e.g., linoleum, bubble wrap, thermos, and aspirin. A trademark thus popularized is at risk of being challenged or revoked, unless the trademark owner works sufficiently to counter and prevent such broad use.

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Generic trademark in the context of Photocopier

A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers use a technology called xerography, a dry process that uses electrostatic charges on a light-sensitive photoreceptor to first attract and then transfer toner particles (a powder) onto paper in the form of an image. The toner is then fused onto the paper using heat, pressure, or a combination of both. Copiers can also use other technologies, such as inkjet, but xerography is standard for office copying.

Commercial xerographic office photocopying gradually replaced copies made by verifax, photostat, carbon paper, mimeograph machines, and other duplicating machines.

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Generic trademark in the context of Cultipacker

A cultipacker is a piece of agricultural equipment that crushes dirt clods, removes air pockets, and presses down small stones, forming a smooth, firm seedbed. Where seed has been broadcast, the roller gently firms the soil around the seeds, ensuring shallow seed placement and good seed-to-soil contact.

The term cultipacker is almost exclusively applied to ridged rollers, while the terms field roller or land roller may refer to either a smooth or a ridged roller. Some farmers treat the terms as mutually exclusive, but many others treat the ridged tools as a class of field rollers. For example, C.H. Wendel's Encyclopedia of American Farm Implements and Antiques covers the whole category as land rollers. The term cultipacker appeared in English around 1914 and probably originated as a brand name of the C.G. Dunham Company of Berea, Ohio, which advertised "Culti-Packer" models starting around that time. That company did not have the ridged-roller subcategory to itself by any stretch, as Wendel's book demonstrates, but for whatever reason, its name for its version stuck well in many minds. By the 1920s and ever since, it has been widely used in a genericized sense, at least in some regions of the U.S. if not nationwide. In Britain, an equivalent tool is usually called a Cambridge roller or Cambridge roll; D.J. Smith's Discovering Horse-drawn Farm Machinery says, "The Cambridge roll, named after its makers, was a ring roller made up of numerous equally spaced rings or ridges."

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Generic trademark in the context of Kerosene

Kerosene, or paraffin, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum. It is widely used as a fuel in aviation as well as households. Its name derives from the Greek κηρός (kērós) meaning "wax"; it was registered as a trademark by Nova Scotia geologist and inventor Abraham Gesner in 1854 before evolving into a generic trademark. It is sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage.

Kerosene is widely used to power jet engines of aircraft (jet fuel), as well as some rocket engines in a highly refined form called RP-1. It is also commonly used as a cooking and lighting fuel, and for fire toys such as poi. In parts of Asia, kerosene is sometimes used as fuel for small outboard motors or even motorcycles. World total kerosene consumption for all purposes is equivalent to about 5,500,000 barrels per day as of July 2023.

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Generic trademark in the context of Gouda cheese

Gouda cheese (/ˈɡdə/ , US also /ˈɡdə/ ; Dutch: [ˈɣʌudaː] ; Dutch: Goudse kaas, "cheese from Gouda") is a creamy, yellow cow's milk cheese originating from the Netherlands. It is one of the most popular and produced cheeses worldwide. The name is used today as a general term for numerous similar cheeses produced in the traditional Dutch manner.

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Generic trademark in the context of Ouija

The Ouija (/ˈwə/ WEE-jə, /-i/ -⁠jee), also known as a Ouija board, spirit board, talking board, or witch board, is a flat board marked with the letters of the Latin alphabet, the numbers 0–9, the words "yes", "no", and occasionally "hello" and "goodbye", along with various symbols and graphics. It uses a planchette (a small heart-shaped piece of wood or plastic) as a movable indicator to spell out messages during a séance. Participants place their fingers on the planchette, which is moved about the board to spell words. The name "Ouija" is a trademark of Hasbro (inherited from Parker Brothers), but is often used generically to refer to any talking board.

Spiritualists in the United States believed that the dead were able to contact the living, and reportedly used a talking board very similar to the modern Ouija board at their camps in Ohio during 1886 with the intent of enabling faster communication with spirits. Following its commercial patent by businessman Elijah Bond being passed on 10 February 1891, the Ouija board was regarded as an innocent parlor game unrelated to the occult until American spiritualist Pearl Curran popularized its use as a divining tool during World War I.

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Generic trademark in the context of Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editing, and its name has become genericised as a verb (e.g., to "photoshop" an image, "photoshopping", and "photoshop contest") although Adobe disapproves of such use.

Photoshop can edit and compose raster images in multiple layers and supports masks, alpha compositing and several color models. Photoshop uses its own PSD and PSB file formats to support these features. In addition to raster graphics, Photoshop has limited abilities to edit or render text and vector graphics (especially through clipping path for the latter), as well as 3D graphics and video. Its feature set can be expanded by plug-ins; programs developed and distributed independently of Photoshop that run inside it and offer new or enhanced features.

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Generic trademark in the context of Detonating cord

Detonating cord (also called detonation cord, detcord, detacord, blasting rope, or primer cord) is a thin, flexible plastic tube usually filled with pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN, pentrite). With the PETN exploding at a rate of approximately 6,400 m/s (21,000 ft/s), any common length of detonation cord appears to explode instantaneously. It is a high-speed fuse which explodes, rather than burns, and is suitable for detonating high explosives. The detonation velocity is sufficient to use it for synchronizing multiple charges to detonate almost simultaneously even if the charges are placed at different distances from the point of initiation. It is used to reliably and inexpensively chain together multiple explosive charges. Typical uses include mining, drilling, demolitions, and warfare.

"Cordtex" and "Primacord" are two of many trademarks which have slipped into use as a generic term for this material.

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Generic trademark in the context of Photostat

The Photostat machine, or Photostat, was an early projection photocopier created in the decade of the 1900s by the Commercial Camera Company, which became the Photostat Corporation. The "Photostat" name, which was originally a trademark of the company, became genericized, and was often used to refer to similar machines produced by the RetinalGraph Company or to any copy made by any such machine.

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Generic trademark in the context of Plasticine

Plasticine is a putty-like modelling material made from calcium salts, petroleum jelly and aliphatic acids. Though originally a brand name for the British product, it was later used generically in English as a product category for other formulations.

Plasticine is used for children's play and as a modelling medium for more formal or permanent structures. Because of its non-drying property, it is commonly chosen for stop motion animation, including several Academy Award-winning films by Nick Park.

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Generic trademark in the context of Instamatic

The Instamatic is a series of inexpensive, easy-to-load 126 and 110 cameras made by Kodak beginning in 1963. The Instamatic was immensely successful, introducing a generation to low-cost photography and spawning numerous imitators.

During its heyday, the range was so ubiquitous that the Instamatic name is still frequently used as a generic trademark to refer to any inexpensive point-and-shoot camera.

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Generic trademark in the context of Styrofoam

Styrofoam is a brand of closed-cell extruded polystyrene foam (XPS), manufactured to provide continuous building insulation board used in walls, roofs, and foundations as thermal insulation and as a water barrier. This material is light blue in color and is owned and manufactured by DuPont. DuPont also has produced a line of green and white foam shapes for use in crafts and floral arrangements.

The term styrofoam is argued to have become a genericized trademark; as it is often used in the United States as a colloquial term to refer to expanded (not extruded) polystyrene foam (EPS). Outside the United States, EPS is most commonly referred to as simply "polystyrene" with the term "styrofoam" being used in its capacity to describe all forms of extruded polystyrene, not just the Dupont brand itself. Polystyrene (EPS) is often used in food containers, coffee cups, and as cushioning material in packaging. Styrofoam is, however, a denser material than EPS and is more commonly suited to tasks such as thermal insulation.

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Generic trademark in the context of Robotic vacuum cleaner

A robotic vacuum cleaner, sometimes called a robovac or a roomba as a generic trademark, is an autonomous vacuum cleaner which has a limited vacuum floor cleaning system combined with sensors and robotic drives with programmable controllers and cleaning routines. Early designs included manual operation via remote control and a "self-drive" mode which allowed the machine to clean autonomously.

Marketing materials for robotic vacuums frequently cite low noise, ease of use, and autonomous cleaning as main advantages. The perception that these devices are set-and-forget solutions is widespread but not always correct. Robotic vacuums are usually smaller than traditional upright vacuums, and weigh significantly less than even the lightest canister models. However, a downside to a robotic vacuum cleaner is that it takes an extended amount of time to vacuum an area due to its size. They are also relatively expensive, and replacement parts and batteries can contribute significantly to their operating cost. Concerns over privacy and security have also been raised around robotic vacuums.

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Generic trademark in the context of Dichlorodifluoromethane

Dichlorodifluoromethane (R-12) is a colorless gas popularly known by the genericized brand name Freon (as Freon-12). It is a chlorofluorocarbon halomethane (CFC) used as a refrigerant and aerosol spray propellant. In compliance with the Montreal Protocol, its manufacture was banned in developed countries (non-article 5 countries) in 1996, and in developing countries (Article 5 countries) in 2010 out of concerns about its damaging effect on the ozone layer. Its only allowed usage is as a fire retardant in submarines and aircraft. It is soluble in many organic solvents. R-12 cylinders are colored white.

R-12 has the highest potential for ozone destruction of all refrigeration gases.

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Generic trademark in the context of Davenport (sofa)

Davenport was the name of a series of sofas made by the Massachusetts furniture manufacturer A. H. Davenport and Company, now defunct. Due to the popularity of the furniture at the time, the name davenport became a genericized trademark in parts of the United States.

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Generic trademark in the context of Air mattress

An air mattress or airbed is an inflatable mattress or sleeping pad that can be pumped up by an electric pump, or manually by a hand or high volume bellows foot pump via attaching the hose into the air valve.

Due to its buoyancy, it is also often used as a water toy or flotation device, and in some countries, including the UK and South Africa, is called a lilo ("Li-lo" being a generic trademark — derived from the phrase "lie low") or a Readybed.

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Generic trademark in the context of Aspirin

Aspirin (/ˈæsp(ə)rɪn/) is the genericized trademark for acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to reduce pain, fever, and inflammation, and as an antithrombotic. Specific inflammatory conditions that aspirin is used to treat include Kawasaki disease, pericarditis, and rheumatic fever.

Aspirin is also used long-term to help prevent further heart attacks, ischaemic strokes, and blood clots in people at high risk. For pain or fever, effects typically begin within 30 minutes. Aspirin works similarly to other NSAIDs but also suppresses the normal functioning of platelets.

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Generic trademark in the context of Hacky sack

A footbag is a small, round bag usually filled with plastic pellets or sand, which is kicked into the air as part of a competitive game or as a display of dexterity. "Hacky Sack" is the name of a brand of footbag popular in the 1970s (currently owned by Wham-O), which has since become a generic trademark.

The most common game of footbag consists of two or more players standing in a circle and trying to keep the sack off the ground for as long as possible.

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