Preventing genericide: Saving your trade mark from falling prey to the public domain
Videotape, Escalator, Trampoline, Laundromat[1]. What do all of these words have in common? They were all once legally protectable trade marks which, due to the way in which they were used, have lost their distinctiveness and since become ‘generic’. But what does ‘generic’ mean? A generic trade mark is a word or phrase that