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Comment by tinkertamper | Hacker News Reader

I also don't know what I'm talking about, but I think one of the core responsibilities of a trademark owner is that you establish a history of defending it. I heard once that if you don't do that you risk losing control of your rights to that property. Any smarty pants on here able to confirm/set me straight?

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This is called trademark erosion. An example of this historically would be aspirin, which was originally a trademarked brand name of Bayer but was legally ruled in 1918 and 1921 to have become genericized, because the company took no actions to prevent others from using the name.

This generally only applies when non-holders use the trademark to market in the same field as the original business, though: not "we went to McDonald's", but rather "welcome to McDonald's (no relation to the corporate giant), would you like fries with that?". It doesn't apply in this case because the Call of Duty series has nothing to do with selling vehicles.

The standard example I've heard is for Trampoline. No one calls them rebound tumblers anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trampoline#First_modern_trampo...

I think this is really just a case of lawyers being super-protective. It also pays well, I'm sure.

I think a words like Humvee or even Google have coloquially already lost their meaning--their meaning is polymorphic, it's only a matter of time (100 years is a matter of time) before a better Humvee or Google not released by the original product designer comes along that people will call Humvee or Google anyways.

Trader Joe’s makes the best kleenex. And my iPhone captures the best kodak moments.

I also enjoy facetiming via Slack.

And of course googling for music is best done on Spotify.

Haha, yep.

Personally, my friends and I have been skype-ing through Discord a lot recently.

Hardly anybody remembers nowadays but Elevators and Fridges used to be brand names (of the Otis Elevator company and Frigidaire, respectively). So the endpoint of nobody remembering that your IP is IP has been reached in practice.

And more recently there's the PC, which became detached from IBM in record time.

> Elevators and Fridges used to be brand names (of the Otis Elevator company and Frigidaire, respectively)

There's no real reason to think "fridge" is shortened from "Frigidaire" as opposed to "refrigerator".

And plenty of reason to think against. The "dg" sound doesn't come through in "Frigidaire" at all. It does have an actual letter "d" present, but with the "i" in between the sound becomes entirely different. Compare to refrigerator, where the "frige" portion of the word slants easily to rhyme with "ridge."

I can't go that far. What country are you from? I would have said the second syllable of "refrigerator", and the first syllable of "Frigidaire", both obligatorily rhyme with "ridge". There's no alternative.

"Frigidaire" should only really differ from "frigid air" in terms of prosody.

I think they're assuming Frigidaire is pronounced with a hard G, which is fair enough if you haven't heard it spoken before.

I'm actually assuming it pronounced with a more enunciated J sound than other poster accents seem to. I've always heard frigid with the emphasis on the "J" sound, rather than the softer blended j sound that produces the "dg" blend.

California. I suppose it's just a difference in accent, because I've always heard Frigid pronounced somewhat like fri-jid, with a clear enunciation between the parts, rather than the blended "dg" sound.

Well, in Spanish a refrigerator can be colloquially called a "frigider". I've never seen it in writing though.

In Italy it is the same.

I’ve always liked escalators and xerox machines.

On xerox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbqAMEwtOE

Not to mention Heroine.

I think you mean Heroin, the opioid drug, rather than heroine, a female hero.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero

Wikipedia has a good list of trademarks in various states of becoming generic. It's interesting to read and think how silly it is how many terms still have protection despite not having any mental association with a particular company.

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

The very first that came to my mind is Jeep. In some countries it literally means SUV nowadays.The term is so ingrained that pretty much everyone says like this: 'He's got a BMW Jeep' or 'Look, that's a nice looking Jeep, surely it's Mercedes!'. The funniest thing is that nobody can ever see a real Jeep anymore,as nobody buys them( talking about Europe here).

Interesting, I've never heard jeep used like that in the U.S. Actual jeeps are pretty common here though.

Born in Bulgaria, can confirm - "Джип", or "Джипка" which is really "Jeep" in bulgarian (and probably other slavic languages).

Another one is "Yonica" for any synthesizer. Obviously "Scotch" (more for the tape, than drink).

But... What I really love is "Pampers" - yes this is the bulgarian word for... "diapers"... and many more...

Don't forget "Xerox"

Amusing and relevant: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/opinion/verbatim-what-is-...

We've got it more or less the same in Lithuania with a lot of brands. "Pampers" is the default name for nappies. "Scotch" and "Xerox" are popular in Slavic languages,we never picked these up for some reason. Here,in the UK, the more popular ones are: Stanley Knife( any retractable knife) or Hoover( Vacuum cleaner).

There's quite a few people (in the US) that use "jeep" as a general term for any Jeep-sized offroading vehicle.

In fact the word "jeep" came from the colloquial contraction of "GP" - general purpose (vehicle).

For most of my life I didn’t know Jeep was a brand. It’s simply what you call most off-road vehicles in German. And looking at Wikipedia it seems like that is the case in most of Europe.

In Russia 'jeep' as an off-road vehicle has even made its way into a dictionary. The same with xerox as any photo-copier.

http://gramota.ru/slovari/dic/?word=%D0%94%D0%B6%D0%B8%D0%BF...

How is this an example of trademark erosion? Fiat-Chrysler still owns the rights to the name and would easily be able sue a competitor that tried calling their vehicle a Jeep. Sure, it's colloquially used as a genericized trademark, but it's not a true example, unlike ones like aspirin, cellophane, escalator - or yes, trampoline.

People using it colloquially is exactly the thing that leads to trademark erosion.

Most eroded trade marks were previously owned and registered. It's not the registration that gives trademark protection. Trademark protection exists to protect the market place. It prevents companies from piggybacking on someone else's success.

But if the consumer doesn't think that "Jeep" is a mark, but a form factor, then no one is protected from any misunderstanding and it would be no longer a trade mark. Happened to Motorola in 2005 with "flip phone".

Really I think this illustrates best that trademarks are of dubious sanity. They attempt to police language but have no real control over it - pouncing like attack dogs to try to set an example to the kind of people who call all game consoles "Nintendos". In practice it seems like makework for lawyers which we need like a hole in a head - while to defend imaginary property in pursuit of imaginary lost profits.

I can't help but think society would be better served by using the court system for just about anything else including seeking damages from the gentleman who sold them the brooklyn bridge.

I would want some defense if someone was using say a trademark I made for kid entertainment vulgarly. Unfortunately marketing does sometimes mean policing language, if you would end up in an unfortunate position due to association

One is erosion in progress, the other has eroded fully.

Both great examples of trademark erosion, tbh.

In my country, "Jeep" is actually an official vehicle classification category from the transportation ministry, which includes cars such as Suzuki Jimny and Katana. FCA (and Ford) doesn't have official presence here anymore, so nobody probably bother to lobby the government against it.

There seemed to be tons of Jeep brand SUVs in Italy when I was there in October. Our rental car was one without asking for it, and there were four in a row at our hotel in Amalfi. Maybe they are popular in tourist areas?

Jeep, being part of FCA Group (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles), is closer to Italy automotive industry than any other SUV brand.

Additionally, they (actual Jeeps from FCA) were marketed/priced aggressively, and quite a few went in the rent a car segment.

Think of 25,000 to 35,000 for a "Jeep Renegade" (which is rather common in Italy), vs. 50,000 to 70,000 for (say) a BMW X3.

https://www.quattroruote.it/listino/jeep/renegade

https://www.quattroruote.it/listino/bmw/x3

Speaking of the Renegade, they are manufactured in Italy, and have the same platform as the Fiat 500X, and they are largely 2 wheel drive.

"Jeep" is kind of special case as it apparently was used as generic name before there was the brand and trademark.

Jeep is actually enforcing this! In the game hill climb racer 2 there were two vehicles, "Jeep" and "Super Jeep". They had to change the names of the vehicles in the game... (To "Hill Climber").

I don't know where in Europe you live but i see lots of Jeeps. BMWs and Mercedes are more prevalent though.

Right now I live in London and all I see are European SUVs (Range Rover,MB,Jaguar,BMW) with an occasional Toyota or Lexus and maybe 1 Jeep out of 10000 other cars.

Here is Velcro's lawyers telling you to call those other brands 'hook and loop' in a surprisingly straightforward, honest and amusing way.

https://youtu.be/rRi8LptvFZY

Straightforward and amusing, yes. Honest? Well, they are paid to be "honest". Excuse while me while I go buy some hook and loop.

> It doesn't apply in this case because the Call of Duty series has nothing to do with selling vehicles.

I understand that the trademark itself is only protected within the same field, but it seems pretty common to defend trademarks across other fields.

That sentence doesn't make sense to me.

A trademark can only be defended in the face of an incursion into a protected use. If it's an "other field", then it can't be defended and the suit fails.

Fair enough and technically, I think you're right that it's not a "defense" with legal precedence (and therefore not an actual defense). But, I don't think that reality stops many companies from trying to stop the use of their brand or product in other fields because they believe they're protecting the brand.

That said, this AM General case seems to be a licensing case -- they want money for the use of the of their design. To some degree, I don't blame them since Activision is profiting from their work.

Suppose Activision sets a game in Los Angeles. A crucial mission involves a running battle down Hollywood Boulevard.

Should Graumann's Chinese Theater be entitled to money for the use of the appearance of their famous building?

To what extent should Google pay AM General, Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, and so forth for the use of their vehicles' appearances in Streetview?

Finally: someone makes a Mail Simulator game, in which you take the role of being a first-class letter trying to get to a particular house on the other side of the continent. The role of postal vehicle is played by a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV

How much do they owe to Grumman, or to the USPS, or GM?

If you film the Hollywood sign in a movie, then yes you do have to license that image.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trademark-...

> To what extent should Google pay AM General, Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, and so forth for the use of their vehicles' appearances in Streetview?

None. Google captured photos in public, they didn't put those vehicles there, they don't want them there and they don't add any value to streetview.

It's hard to compare that to Call of Duty where activision is intentionally modeling, texture mapping, animating and rendering someone else's design for the express purpose of adding value to their product.

Aspirin didn't become generic because Bayer "took no action", it became generic because the trademark was surrendered as an explicit term in the Treaty of Versailles.

Most trademarks these days don't need to worry about being the literal spoils of war.

Bayer lost their trademark because Treaty of Versailles, but it became generic later in a court case due to lack of action.

Edit: Actually, I think Bayer lost it even earlier, during the war, through the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Yep, so this serve the companies interest because they're trying to defend their trademark; even if they failed. I doubt Humvee is in danger of becoming a generic term (Jeep is more likely; I cannot tell you much my it annoyed me my ex called her Suzuki 4x4 a "Jeep" .. it's not a Jeep! It's a 4x4 or off-roader.." but if they enter into other trademark battles, the opposing council can't say "Well they haven't tried to defend their trademark before now..."

Interesting you bring up a point about Jeep. Never once in the US I've heard of a non-Jeep-made SUV referred to as a "Jeep". But back when I lived in Russia, every single SUV was referred to as a "Jeep". I don't even know of another word for SUV in Russian. Not trying to argue against you btw, I just personally find stuff like this interesting.

EDIT: just checked the wikipedia page for SUV in russian, and yep, in the second paragraph it says that SUVs are usually referred to as "Jeeps" in post-Soviet countries.

Another word is внедорожник, or off-roader: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BE...

The legend has it that when economic restrictions were relaxed towards the end of the SU someone bartered a huge quantity of a natural resource (coal?) for a huge number Jeep Grand Cherokee vehicles. So around that time they were only types of cars in SU - subpar Soviet cars and fancy American Jeeps.

Oh yeah, thanks for bringing it up, totally forgot about this one. Ironically, I've only heard of it being used when it comes to the actual Jeep-made vehicles and stuff like Rav4/Land Cruiser, so it seems to be used pretty accurately.

No idea if it's at all common, but my favorite that I've heard is вездеход.

I like that word too, but it is usually only used to refer to ATV vehicles (specifically amphibious ones), not offroad cars or SUVs.

Interesting, I heard a Russian guy refer to his Lincoln Navigator as that, heh

This was probably ironic use, like calling your big car a tank. Like the other commenter says 'вездеход' is a related but different term - a specialized vehicle where the all-terrainness is the main purpose rather than the extra capability of a road vehicle.

That term or similar ones exist all over the world. The concept of “SUV” is weird to begin with and doesn’t easily translate. Also, the ur-SUVs with truck chassis basically don’t exist outside North America. What the rest of the world call SUVs are X5’s and XC90’s and similar (“crossover” is used for smaller ones usually, despite no technical difference)

The common and slightly derogatory term for an X5/Q7/XC90 type SUV in Swedish is “Stadsjeep” (“city jeep”).

So yes Jeep is definitely not just a brand it’s like xerox and Walkman and used sloppily to refer to anything jeepy-looking.

> The common and slightly derogatory term for an X5/Q7/XC90 type SUV in Swedish is “Stadsjeep” (“city jeep”).

The Russian term for that is "parquet jeep"

In the UK we say "Chelsea tractor". Definitely derogatorily.

A difference is that there is no better Swedish term. So if I google "stadsjeep", the top Ad result is from Hyunday saying

"Hyundai Stadsjeepar | Innovation och 5 års garanti | hyundai.se"

So "Hyunday city jeeps, innovation and 5 year warranty | hyundai.se"

I doubt you'd find that for Chelsea Tractor!

Same in Poland - every slightly offroad-looking vehicle is a jeep. When my dad got himself a Land Rover Discovery it was a jeep to everyone who asked.

I would generally agree with the fact that most off-road cars themselves are not referred to as a "Jeep". But in my experience it has been quite common for people to refer to off-roading as "Jeeping", even if they do not have a Jeep.

Also, I have now read and typed the word Jeep so many times it seems like a really strange word...

i can answer that. russians are retarded (source: am russian). they see a new thing, and think anything written on the side is the name of it. Examples: marker =flomaster. clearly flow master, name of the guys who made the first marker seen in russia. hard drive =winchester. the model of the first hdd seen by russians. and don't try to tell them black olives are olives. they're masleeny, translating to 'oily'. because the first green oluves russians saw were in water, and the black ones were in oil. so they're not olives.

not limited to russians. i hangul, pantyhose is 'pantysuitking'

Oh god, I completely forgot about "winchester", since it's been over a decade since I've heard someone say it. And yup, fully agree on all your points.

even with das coolz english words sneaking in, and markers becoming markers, it's half-assed, in true slav style. the new russian cool-kids did ditch 'winchester.' and replaced it with 'stiff disk'

however anything that's a usb stick, be it a modem or wifi card, is still 'flashka.' sticking a cell modem in a usb port makes it flash memory. i hear with usb-c new lingo will take over. anything usb-c will be called djest' (stiffness)

“Stiff disk”? I thought “zhestkiy disk” would translate to “hard disk” just as well, which is not that far off from the actual english name for HDD/Hard Disk Drive.

This sort of thing happens in all languages - it's not at all unique to Russian, and has nothing to do with Russians being "retarded".

Case in point: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Jeepeta

Very common in the US too - Kleenex, Super Glue, Scotch Tape, Tylenol... trade or corporate terms become vernacular.

One example I can think of, is in 'Gimme the Loot', Biggie refers to an 'Isuzu Jeep'.

I was about to comment in your ex's defense that "Jeep" originated from General Purpose ("GP"), so it's only fair that it reverts to the generic, but it turns out that story is apocryphal.

Nonetheless, there does seem to be a tradition of the term "jeep" referring to military vehicles prior to it being given to the Willys/Ford WWII trucks, so it's all more than a little fuzzy, and it's understandable that outside the U.S. the word is more broadly applied.

Having your name become the standard way to reference to the category of products you make is highly beneficial in terms of brand recognition. In some places every off-road may be a "jeep" and every photocopier may be a "xerox machine", but the companies still own their names and only the original holders can make "real" jeeps or xerox machines.

I'm not a lawyer, as may soon become obvious, but couldn't they just play nice and say Pay us $1 and we're ok with you using our trademark?

Why drag them to court?

I know a best-selling author with a trademark, and she got legal advice that having folks who use her trademark point at her website is good enough.

From the page:

As for proximity of the products, while AM General may license out the rights to depict Humvees in games and toys, the judge isn't impressed because that's not its central purpose as a business.

I also may not know what I'm talking about, but that statement by the judge suggests that in this case, AM General was not so much interested in protecting it's trademark, but rather more interested in enforce some sort of licensing payment.

I have read an alternate strategy here is to license the use of the name for free. Them accepting the license implies that you have the legal rights to it, and licensed uses cannot be used as evidence for trademark erosion. I'm not a lawyer, but it sounds believable.

I too don't know what I am talking about, but I think I prefer Halo of Call of Duty. Console LAN parties, the good old days.

I agree with Smabie though, I think it would bring more to the brand. Also tinkertamper your thoughts appear pretty sound too. Carry on

If not making a fool of themselves in the process, yes. Common sense is much needed in such situations, I would say.

What's the cost-benefit analysis between choosing to do so, or not?

I'd guess that the cost of making a fool of one's self for trademark enforcement is usually pretty low... especially if your target customer doesn't make purchasing decisions based on it.

The cost for the lawyers? Not cheap at all.

If you're a small business, it's expensive. If you have some on staff, it might not be.

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