Thursday, December 16, 2004
I've gotta TiVo on my TiVo
TiVo, the company, is apparently worried that common usages of "TiVo" the trademark will destroy its ability to enforce its rights against infringers. People are using it as a verb ("I TiVoed 'Desperate Housewives'") or as a noun ("My TiVo is more important to me than my Porsche"), neither of which is an acceptable use of a trademark. Trademarks are adjectives, which is why you see product names expressed in such a stilted way, as in "THERMOS® brand Unbreakable Steel Vacuum Mug/Bottle" and "Kleenex brand facial tissues."
TiVo (the company)'s concern is that if it permits casual use of TiVo as a noun or verb to persist, a court will somebody hold that TiVo did not protect its trademark and that it has passed into the public domain. This was the ugly fate of Bayer's trademark "Aspirin," which was held to have passed into the public domain in the 1920s. People said "gimme an Aspirin" when they should have been saying "gimme an Aspirin brand acetyl salicylic acid tablet." Fools. Other trademarks that have passed into generic usage include celophane, kerosene, and escalator. So that is why corporations send around nasty letters warning people to use their trademarks correctly.
Bizarrely, the New York Times blew it in the linked article when it said that TiVo (the company) wants to "keep its name from going the way of Xerox or Kleenex." Both the Xerox Corporation and Kimberly-Clark (the owner of Kleenex brand snot rags) have successfully defended their marks. Indeed, Xerox had to do it twice, once with photocopying and once with faxing -- its "Telecopier" brand of facsimile machine was rapidly on its way to generic use in the 1980s, when businesses would list their "Telecopier" number on their stationary.
Via Brendan, whose brother programs for TiVo (the company).
TiVo (the company)'s concern is that if it permits casual use of TiVo as a noun or verb to persist, a court will somebody hold that TiVo did not protect its trademark and that it has passed into the public domain. This was the ugly fate of Bayer's trademark "Aspirin," which was held to have passed into the public domain in the 1920s. People said "gimme an Aspirin" when they should have been saying "gimme an Aspirin brand acetyl salicylic acid tablet." Fools. Other trademarks that have passed into generic usage include celophane, kerosene, and escalator. So that is why corporations send around nasty letters warning people to use their trademarks correctly.
Bizarrely, the New York Times blew it in the linked article when it said that TiVo (the company) wants to "keep its name from going the way of Xerox or Kleenex." Both the Xerox Corporation and Kimberly-Clark (the owner of Kleenex brand snot rags) have successfully defended their marks. Indeed, Xerox had to do it twice, once with photocopying and once with faxing -- its "Telecopier" brand of facsimile machine was rapidly on its way to generic use in the 1980s, when businesses would list their "Telecopier" number on their stationary.
Via Brendan, whose brother programs for TiVo (the company).
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