Trademark Dictionary
A generic trademark is a type of trademark that has become the common or generic name for a particular type of product or service and has lost its trademark protection. When a trademark becomes generic, it is no longer considered distinctive and cannot be protected by trademark law.
A generic trademark is a word or phrase that has become the common name for a particular type of product or service. Examples of generic trademarks include aspirin, escalator, and thermos. These words were once trademarks, but they have become so commonly used to describe a particular type of product that they have lost their distinctiveness and are no longer protected under trademark law.
By definition, a trademark needs to display sufficient distinctiveness to identify the origin and ownership of the products and services. That means generic and descriptive words should be avoided at all costs. The landmark case in United States PTO v. Booking.com B.V, however, proves that a generic term combined with “.com” or another top-level domain can be registered as a trademark if there is sufficient evidence of consumer recognition.
Creating a business is not an easy job. From sketching out the business plan to choosing the name and logo, the whole process requires a lot of time and effort as nobody would want this amount of planning to go to waste. This is why business owners shouldn’t brush over one of the most important steps in the process of establishing their company – registering a trademark.
One of the best things about life in trama™ is that we come into a first-hand contact with inspiring entrepreneurs, their breathtaking inventions and that we can make our small contribution to making their business aspirations come to life! Omniwave is certainly one of these cases and together with Jorn Mineur, project manager at Bloomline which launched its Omniwave technology, we explore the entrepreneurial path that led to this novel product.
