=PlayStation Portable (by Sony). In this usage, is ~ protected and registered

Or is it too early to have lost protection, as "victrola" did

How about Thompson/Gyration's air mouse, placed in lower-case in a piece by by TIME mag, who is very careful about that kind of thing

Does anyone know an easy way to determine whether an abbreviation, acronym, or trademark has fallen into the Public Domain

Thanks anybody who's beside this sort of thing

This message has been edited. Last edited by: dalehileman,

According to Straight Dope, the following are former trademarks that have lost their legal protection: aspirin, brassiere, cellophane, cola, corn flakes, escalator, granola, gunk, heroin, jungle gym, kerosene, linoleum, raisin bran, shredded wheat, tabloid, thermos, touch-tone, trampoline, yo-yo, and zipper. To that list add lanolin, dry ice and mimeograph.

Still holding onto their trademark protection are AstroTurf, Baggies, Band-Aid, Beer Nuts, Breathalyzer, Brillo Pads, Dacron, Dumpster, Frisbee, Hi-Liter, Hula-Hoop, Jacuzzi, Jeep, Jell-O, Jockey Shorts, Kitty Litter, Kleenex, Laundromat, Liquid Paper, Magic Marker, Muzak, Novocain, Ping-Pong, Play-Doh, Popsicle, Post-it Note, Q-Tip, Realtor, Rollerblade, Scotch Tape, Scrabble, Seeing Eye (dog), Sheetrock, Slim Jim, Styrofoam, Super glue, Technicolor, Teflon, TelePrompTer, Vaseline, Velcro, and Walkman.

As I understand it, there's no simple test. Each of these has gone through adjudication, based on the particular facts in each case. Perhaps some of the latter group of terms are in fact already generic but await a case holding so.

Complicating it further: once we note that the status of a particular mark depends on adjudication, it should be obvious that courts in different countries will sometimes reach differing results. For example, 'aspirin' is a generic term in the US but is still entitled to trademark protection in Canada. The above lists pertain only to the US.

Complicating it even further, all our occupations have acronyms and abbreviations. In healthcare it's really a mess. It depends on your specialty for the common abbreviations, and obviously that can be the target of medical errors. For example, I remember an error where the order was:

Medicine (don't remember the type)
IVP

The nurse understood it as the medicine should be given by intravenous push (IVP), which she did. In fact, the IVP had been an entirely different order for an intravenous pyelogram, which is a kidney test.

nerd: Thank you for that, you went to a lot of trouble

What is the URL of Straightdope, or is it not online

arnie thank you again, I have ensconced it amongst my Favorites

What the Word World needs is a bigger and more nearly complete such listing, and possibly official

It appears that which language one is using is a factor. "Vaseline" is trademarked in the USA, but it just means, "grease" in Spanish.

quote:

What the Word World needs is a bigger and more nearly complete such listing

I'm betting that the best listing would be found in the Associated Press Manual of Style, or whatever the exact title is. Newpaper editors need to know which product-names to capitalize in order to avoid nasty letters from the company's lawyers.

shu: Good guess but it's $20 a year and we live on a fixed income

Incidentally, for what it's worth (not much), the expression "associated press style manual" gets 71.600,000 hits

This message has been edited. Last edited by: dalehileman,

quote:

Originally posted by shufitz:
Newpaper editors need to know which product-names to capitalize in order to avoid nasty letters from the company's lawyers.

Speaking of nasty letters from lawyers, the following may be apocryphal, but this is the way I remember hearing it....
About the same time that Warner Brothers released Casablanca, the Marx brothers came out with A Night in Casablanca. Warner Brothers' lawyers immediately dashed off a letter to the Marx boys complaining of copyright infringement and threatening legal action on the dubious grounds that they had legal title to the word Casablanca. Groucho, figuring that you can't copyright the name of a city, shot back with a blistering missive ordering Warner Brothers to change the name of the corporation because the Marx Brothers had copyrighted the word Brothers. The punch line is that Warner Brothers' lawyers took Groucho seriously. Humourless lot, what?

Groucho's hilarious letter begins thus:

Dear Warner Brothers,

Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca.

It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca.

The entire text, well worth a read, appears here. I tried to find a word to describe it to you, but Groucho is undescribable; he has to be experienced.

Oh, thanks for that, Hic. It was hilarious! I especially liked Groucho's responses to their attorneys.