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Is the term "google" too generic and therefore unworthy of its trademark protection? That's the question before the US Supreme Court.
Words like teleprompter, thermos, hoover, aspirin, and videotape were once trademarked. They lost the status after their names became too generic and fell victim to what is known as "genericide."
What's before the Supreme Court is a trademark lawsuit that Google already defeated in a lower court. The lawsuit claims that Google should no longer be trademarked because the word "google" is synonymous to the public with the term "search the Internet."
"There is no single word other than google that conveys the action of searching the Internet using any search engine," according to the petition to the Supreme Court.
It's perhaps one of the most consequential trademark case before the justices since they ruled in June that offensive trademarks must be allowed.
Source: Ars Technica
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday August 22 2017, @05:35PM
> Have the plaintiffs exhausted every single language to ensure that there's none with an equivalent word for "search the internet".
Other than, you know, "search the internet" or more accurately, "search the web"
The canonical case is aspirin, where it is literally impossible to sell your medicine as acetylsalicylic acid.
Sure, you can manufacture acetylsalicylic acid and market acetylsalicylic acid, but no one is going to buy it. Everyone knows aspiring, no one knows acetylsalicylic acid. Therefore it is literally impossible for an acetylsalicylic acid maker to exist without nullifying the aspiring trademark.
Neither Xerox nor Google suffer from the same problem. People know what a photocopier or a search engine is. No one is going to say "What's a search engine? Oh, you mean a Google!".
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