From Exclusive Brand to Everyday Word: The Danger of Becoming “Too Famous”

Have you ever asked for a Kleenex instead of a tissue? Or stored your food in a Tupperware that was actually another brand?

In the marketing world there is a phenomenon that is equal parts fascinating and dangerous. It happens when a brand becomes so successful that its proper name turns into the common name for its entire category. This process is known as brand genericide (or genericization). Although it sounds like the greatest advertising achievement possible, for a company's lawyers it is a true nightmare that can cost millions. That risk is managed through brand strategy and a creative system that keeps the name from turning into a description.

In this article we tell you how this phenomenon works and which famous brands lost their legal rights by becoming part of our everyday vocabulary.

The Final Judgment: When the Law Takes Your Name Away

For a brand to keep its legal protection so no one else can copy it, it must be distinctive. In other words, consumers must understand that the name represents a specific company and not the product itself.

When a brand becomes generic, intellectual property courts can revoke its registration. If the general public no longer distinguishes between the original creator and its competitors, the name stops functioning as a trademark in that territory and for those goods. From that moment on, other companies can use it to describe the product category, not as an exclusive brand name.

5 Giant Brands That Lost Their Legal Rights

• Aspirin (Bayer): Acetylsalicylic acid was registered by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. However, after World War I and a series of legal battles in 1921, U.S. courts determined that the public was already using the term to refer to any headache pill.
• Escalator (Otis): The Otis Elevator Company invented and registered this term. They made the mistake of using the word as a general description in their own catalogs. In 1950, the authorities stripped them of exclusivity.
• Thermos (King-Seeley Thermos Co.): The famous container that keeps your drinks hot or cold belonged to a single company. In the United States, courts treated it as generic for those products, with use restrictions for competitors.
• Zipper (B.F. Goodrich): In the 1920s, this company registered the term for the fastening system on its rubber boots. The name caught on so strongly in popular language that they quickly lost control of the word.
• Yo-yo (Duncan): The toymaker Duncan held the commercial rights to this classic toy. In 1965, a court ruled that no other reasonable word existed in the language to describe the object, declaring it a generic word.

The Phenomenon at a Local Level

This problem doesn't only happen globally; it also affects specific markets due to each country's popular culture.

A well-known case took place in Spain, where the multinational Danone lost the exclusive rights to the word Bio after a 2008 Supreme Court ruling. The term became the usual designation for yogurts fermented with bifidus. In the same country, the snack brand Ganchitos suffered the same fate, becoming a free word for any puffed-corn snack.

How Do Today's Brands Defend Themselves?

• Google keeps a close eye on dictionaries and media outlets to demand that “to google” not be used as a generic verb for searching the internet.
• Velcro went as far as releasing a humorous music video starring its own lawyers, begging the public to call competitors' products “hook and loop fasteners” and not Velcro.
• Jeep spends millions on advertising clarifying that “not every 4x4 vehicle is a Jeep”.

Conclusion

Next time you go to the supermarket and ask for a product by its brand name, remember you are taking part in one of the most curious phenomena of language and business. Being the market leader is excellent, but being so famous that your name stops belonging to you is the highest price a brand can pay. If you want to build a famous brand without losing control of the name, let's talk.