The Game of the Name
What’s in a name? Money, for starters. That is why American corporations are so zealous in safeguarding their trademark brand names and symbols. A federal patent guarantees exclusive production of an invention for 17 years. A copyright assures protection of writing and other creative expression well beyond the author’s lifetime. But a company cannot maintain sole rights to its registered trademark unless the firm vigorously protects the name from lapsing into generic use.
That is why, for instance, anyone now can use the names aspirin, cellophane, cornflakes, trampoline, escalator, kerosene and thermos without fear of retribution of the products’ originators. All were registered trademarks at one time, and could be used only by their first manufacturer with the little circled letter r at the end: Bayer, Du Pont, Kellogg, George Nissen, Otis, Bennett and King Seeley Thermos Co.
The importance of trademarks is highlighted in the current issue of Editor & Publisher, a media-industry journal that contains a special section on trademarks and how to protect them. The section carries a number of product advertisements imploring journalists to respect the rights of their trademarks and to refer to them in such a way that maintains their proprietary nature. This is done primarily through capitalizing the trademark name and using it only in reference to the specific commercial brand in question.
For instance, the famous circus notes in a full-page ad that “Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus” and “Greatest Show on Earth” both are registered trademarks and should be used as such. To describe a competing refrigerator as a Frigidaire would undermine White Consolidated Industries’ trademark of the brand name Frigidaire. All crawler tractors are not caterpillars or cats but, properly, Caterpillar tractors. So, too, with Kleenex, Weight Watchers, the College Board and SAT tests, Laundromat, Rolodex and Tobasco.
“Unique trademarks are a vanishing breed,” notes James R. Lunsford Jr., a past president of the U.S. Trademark Assn. and former trademark counsel for the Coca-Cola Co. Lunsford and others spend considerable time and money making certain that you don’t say Kleenex, Caterpillar, Coke and Landromat when you really mean tissue, crawler tractor, cola-flavored soft drink and that place down on the corner where they have the coin-operated washing machines.
You might get into Trouble, with a capital T.
