Supreme Court asked to nullify the Google trademark | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court asked to nullify the Google trademark

arstechnica.com

58 pointsSwellJoe57 comments

I don't really see the parallel to the other generics listed.

Sure, talking to somebody about how you "googled" a search term is analogous to asking someone to "pass me a kleenex". Pedantic people will feign confusion, but otherwise it's totally legit.

Registering a domain name that uses the word "google", which is what happened here, is more like trying to sell "Puffs brand kleenex". Pretty clearly not legit, at least here in the US.

If the term is generic then Alphabet loses a right to prevent others from using it in the marketplace. "Kleenex" is not a legally genericized trademark in the US -- though it certainly has potential to become one.

Actual genericized trademarks in the US include: Aspirin, Dry Ice, Flip Phone, Kerosene, Thermos, Trampoline, Videotape. You absolutely can sell your own off-brand of the above product using these terms in the US. Entirely legit.

More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...

Some more notable ones: escalator, zipper, app store and interestingly enough, heroine.

AFAIK, app store never lost the trademark

It all depends on what the company that owns the trademark does to try to prevent erosion and maintain a strong tie between the word and the brand itself. A related Wikipedia article [1] specifically mentions the lengths Google has gone to in this respect.

All that said, there may be an issue of prior art, from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

> "And are you not," said Fook leaning anxiously forward, "a greater analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark

Prior art applies to patents, not trademarks. Trademark rights arise from use in commerce.

Trademarks generally go to the first user within a given market. In this case, had the Googleplex delivered online search services and were in business before Google they would be able to stop Google from being "Google" if that it would dilute the value of their trademark or, more likely, cause customer confusion.

Ideally they would have federally registered the trademark and also protected it in the market in a timely fashion. If not they would lose their protection, which is why trademarks are vigorously protected.

Highly doubt that'll happen, otherwise that probably would have happened to the word(s) kleenex, Jacuzzi, crock-pot, etc. They are all synonymous for the items discussed, and in fact shorter to say than the generic term for the products: "tissue paper, "hot tub", "slow cooker".

It's just called brand strength...

Its not about length its about whether the term has become so ubiquitous that it identifies a category rather than just a brand. Many, many trademarks have been lost this way and Kleenex is one of those on the verge of being genericized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleenex > In the USA, the Kleenex name has become, or as a legal matter nearly has become, genericized: the popularity of the product has led to the use of its name to refer to any facial tissue, regardless of the brand. Many dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster and Oxford, now include definitions in their publications defining it as such.

Ironically, one factor is the genericization of trademarks is whether the common usage no longer treats it as a proper noun, that is, whether it is used with or without a capitalized first letter. Your use of the lettering `kleenex` would indicate that it is no longer a brand but just a common noun, and get you a nastygram from the Kleenex marketing team about "Kleenex-brand facial tissues". :-)

Xerox also nearly became generic. Coke for cola or even any fizzy drink in some places.

I don't think Google is going to become generic.

That's what Bayer thought about Aspirin.

But I still agree with you.

I thought they lost that trademark because of their involvement with the Nazis during World War II?

Am I thinking of some other drug?

It (and other of their property, intellectual and otherwise) was seized by some allied governments during WWI (not WWII), but in the US that just got it sold to a domestic company. Who then lost the aspirin trademark to genericization.

WWI. Right. I knew it was seized by the government but I didn't realize it was given to someone else.

Interesting.

> That's what Bayer thought about Aspirin.

Bayer lost the Aspirin trademark in the US (along with everything else) to wartime seizure of enemy property.

Sterling, who got the US assets of Bayer, lost the US trademark to genericization.

Could happen. Wikipedia has a list of trademarks formally lost for becoming generic: Aspirin, Catseye, Cellophane, Dry ice, Escalator, Flip phone, Flit gun, Heroin, Kerosene, Lanolin, Laundromat, Linoleum, Mimeograph, Sellotape, Spidola, Teleprompter, Thermos, Trampoline, Videotape.

Xerox is still fighting becoming generic. 3M continues to fight on for "Scotch tape".

Roller Blade was the one that always surprised me. I was shocked they seemed to successfully push inline skating to save it.

They forced a movie to change its name.[1] It's a skater movie, but not an inline skater movie.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089930/

I highly doubt it, for three reasons:

1. Google has a whole suite of products that bear its name.

2. The name is not on-the-nose like many of those examples, Videotape, TelePrompter, DryIce, etc.

3. It's not a derived from a clinical or scientific name for a substance. Linoleum is made from linseed oil; Google was not built from googols.

Honestly, I think Apple would lose the iphone trademark before Google does.

I double-take every time I see some fiction where some supposedly real person uses a capital letter for "dumpster", because seriously nobody does that, but apparently there is actually a Dumpster brand and the company that owns it is notoriously litigious.

What in the world is the non-"Dumpster" word for a dumpster?

A skip? A bin?

I mean I know that doesn't replace that name to your ears now, but if that word was never made up others would have been used instead, as they do in some other anglophone corners of the world.

The Dempster Dumpster had a standard form factor, so that the forks of a Dempster Dumpmaster truck could pick it up and dump it into the back.[1] The patents have expired, so now anyone can make compatible rubbish bins and trucks. The standard form factor lives on for compatibility with the installed base. Properly, the term "Dumpster" refers only to containers compatible with that system.

There's also the Dempster Dinosaur, for when a Dumpster just isn't big enough.[2] That form factor is called a "roll off".

The Dempster brothers solved the problem of collecting, lifting, packing, and moving a lot of trash without hand labor, and dominated the industry for decades. Dempster, the company, seems not to have survived. The "Dumpster" trademark was allowed to lapse. From the USPTO:

    DUMPSTER (EXPIRED) 
    CONTAINERS FOR RECEIVING, TRANSPORTING, AND DUMPING MATERIALS OF VARIOUS
    KINDS-NAMELY, REFUSE, TRASH, GARBAGE, SCRAP, DIRT, AND ROCKS.
    FIRST USE: 1936-09-01.

The generic term is "rubbish bin".

[1] http://www.classicrefusetrucks.com/albums/DE/DE07.html [2] http://www.classicrefusetrucks.com/albums/DE/DE05.html

In Dutch, we call it a container. Yes, the English word is used by the Dutch to refer to the rubbish bin we all have outside of our houses. They're all the same style too pretty much: hard plastic (not sure which type) and all pick-uppable by the garbage collectors. Though they do come in different volume sizes.

https://autoline.nl/img/s/gemeentelijke-machines-vuilniscont...

What is the motivation here for the plaintiff? Isn't it rather expensive to appeal a case all the way up to the Supreme court? Is there really that much money in owning sites like GoogleDonaldTrump.com? I can't imagine it draws that many visitors. I would also think the only serious buyer would be Google and I doubt they would be open to a settlement that might damage the strength of their trademark in the future.

Some Google competitor can sponsor this. If TM will be nullified, there will be tons of low quality products with Google word in the name, it will damage brand significantly, and create a lot of customers confusions..

Doubt it will succeed. I use "hoover" when I'm actually using a Dyson. I'd never say I'm googling something when I'm actually using Bing.

As a counter-anecdote, I often say I'm googling something when I'm actually using duckduckgo.

I also do this, but that's because I work at Google and got tired of explaining to coworkers why I don't usually like the results from our search engine! Also, "I duckduckgoed that" doesn't roll off of the tongue very well.

"duck it"

"Let me duck that for you"

Coming to think of it, I too explain my searches on DuckDuckGo to colleagues as a "Google". Irrespective of the underlying reason, this gives merit to the plaintiffs' claim.

Maybe "I duckduckwent it"?

I'm surprised you'd not get culturally ousted for that? I know nothing about Google's internal culture, but I'd assume everyone would be against using someone else's product.

> I know nothing about Google's internal culture, but I'd assume everyone would be against using someone else's product.

Your expectations make it sound like you've only worked at companies with terribly unhealthy workplace cultures. When I joined Google, I remember noticing that probably 50%+ of my coworkers used iPhones. That changed with all the free phones they gave out, but any place that would "culturally oust" you for not drinking the Kool-Aid sounds like a nightmare to work at.

Google (as I've experienced it) is filled with normal, generally friendly folks. A few small jokes, but no cultural ousting. While I don't work in search (big company, many products), even the folks I know there recognize we need different tools for our job and sometimes Google search just isn't the way to go. I suspect if it were a more specialized company (say Tableau) then using a another company's tool for daily work might be frowned upon.

I guess I like to advertise that I specifically use DuckDuckGo when I'm searching, so I purposefully say "I DuckDuckGo'd it" but it sounds terribly awkward :/

I wonder if this is a British thing? While Hoover is (or at least was) a very large and well-known vacuum cleaner brand in the states, I don't know anyone who says "hoover" to mean "vacuum cleaner." But I have heard it on British TV shows. (That and "Bic" to mean ball-point pen, apparently. Bic is mostly known for making extremely low quality razors in the US.)

I don't know anyone who literally means "Google" when they say to google something, though. They just generally mean search.

One day after switching to DuckDuckGo I found myself explaining to a friend that, "I no longer use Google to google things." It gave me pause.

So you better control how successful you get or you may have your name made meaningless. This is ridiculous.

When I say I googled it, I looked it up on google. If I looked it up elsewhere, I'll I looked it up on X or X or just looked it up online. Don't penalize the company because people misuse the name.

When I say I tweeted it, I don't mean snapped it, or vice versa. Just because the name gets misused, doesn't mean the service providers should get penalized.

"There is no single word other than google that conveys the action of searching the Internet using any search engine,"

How does "search" not convey searching the internet using any search engine?

Exactly.

> The appeals panel said trademark loss to genericide occurs when the name has become an "exclusive descriptor" that makes it difficult for competitors to compete unless they use that name.

Nobody can convince me that Bing will improve it's marketing by suggesting that people should "use Bing to google anything on the Internet"!

Interesting off-topic thought - I still catch myself saying "I'm going to uber there" when I'm actually using Lyft.

I still instinctively tell people to "google it" even though I exclusively use Bing or DuckDuckGo. I usually catch myself after.

And in an alternate universe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfHuZ5qrYX4

Holy moly!

So cringeworthy!

i find odd pleasure in using alternative search engines as a verb in casual conversation

For laughs I sometimes say I'm AltaVista'ing something. Or "Veronica'ing" if I suspect they'd might get the reference.

Yes, but what search engine to you think they will use? I would expect Google.

> How does "search" not convey searching the internet using any search engine?

Because 'search' could also be you looking for the second sock to make a pair in 'the real world', search is not internet specific, google is.

on its own, the word "search" doesn't imply "the internet". linguistically, the verb "google" has cultural value beyond the brand. it's rare for the phrase "google it" to actually mean "search the internet for it _using google_".

it's rare for the phrase "google it" to actually mean "search the internet for it _using google_".

This is the only way I ever use the phrase "google it". I don't say I "googled" someone when I search for them on Facebook. I say it when I search on Google.

If you told someone to google "foo" and instead they search for it on DuckDuckGo did they do something wrong?

HNs technical internet savvy audience is the wrong place to ask. Average people don't even know what search engine they use, just whatever their browser uses as default.

So, were the trademark nullified, could Microsoft come up with a google of their own, perhaps on google.bing.com? I mean, they probably wouldn't, but could they?

Sure; most books called "Webster's Dictionary" have nothing to do with Noah Webster for this reason.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster%27s_Dictionary

I suppose they could register the bing.google domain and point their search engine users to https://bing.google/

That sounds rather difficult, given that Google manages that TLD. It's no more plausible than Google registering http://google.bing.

And no, they are not alone as far as brand-based TLDs go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom...

I see this happening but not for another few decades.

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