Genericide: The Danger of Popularity

Usually if you own a trademark for your product, the more popular the better. This is why you get the trademark in the first place, to identify your great product with the great name. What you need to be concerned with is becoming more popular than the product itself where your trademark name becomes so synonymous with the product, that it becomes the generic name for the product type in general.

An example of a trademark that became generic is Aspirin. That was originally a trademark owned by Bayer for acetylsalicylic acid. It became so synonymous that the brand name became the general name for the item itself.

A trademark that is not found generic yet, but certainly is becoming more synonymous with the product is Kleenex® facial tissue.

A clear sign that a company is concerned about genericide is when they start pushing against their own name as the product identifier. Kleenex® would be the first to tell you that you are asking for a “facial tissue” and not a “Kleenex®”. If you are looking for other examples, feel free to Google® them - see what I did there?

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