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Customer Story
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August 6, 2024
A Timeline of Brand Names That Became Everyday Words
“Just google it.”, “Throw me the frisbee!”, and “Toss it in the dumpster” are all common phrases many of us use in our daily lives, but did you know that each of them contains a generic trademark? These brand names have become so widely used in conversation that they have become the generic terms used when referring to Internet search engines, flying discs, and large trash bins. There are quite a few everyday words we use that have become the generic term to describe an entire category of products or services. Many of these words started as a brand name that exclusively identified the brand owner of the product or service, but have since been genericized. What is genericization? It is when a company loses the trademark to its brand name for a product or service because the name has become so generic that it is no longer associated with the trademark owner. Some companies do have a trademark brand name even though it’s been widely used as a generic term for decades, while other companies lost their trademark name for various reasons and can no longer lay claim to the brand name they introduced to the world.
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