What happens to a trademark that becomes so well known that it turns into a synonym for a particular product or service? Generic signs - signs that merely describe a specific product or service - cannot be registered as trademarks. But what happens if a trademark becomes generic over time because more and more people associate it with a particular product or service?
The words Post-it, Sharpie, Ping-pong, Jacuzzi, Jet ski and Trampoline are trademarks, or were trademarks in the past, and not merely terms for particular products. If a term becomes generic, it loses the possibility of trademark protection. Like foreign trademark laws, the Slovenian Industrial Property Act (ZIL-1) also prohibits the registration of descriptive or generic signs. Pursuant to point b of the first paragraph of Article 43 of ZIL-1, a sign may not be registered as a trademark if it is devoid of any distinctive character.
While the companies Jet ski and Adrenalin are still fighting to preserve their trademarks, Escalator, Aspirin and Trampoline have already lost trademark protection. Trampoline is an especially vivid example of a trademark lost due to genericness. The Trampoline & Tumbling Company was founded in 1942 by Griswold and Nissen for the purpose of creating sports equipment for “rebound tumbling”.
Instead of that expression, the public began using the word trampoline for their product and also for similar products made by their competitors, and Griswold and Nissen lost their trademark because the term had become generic.
High recognition can therefore threaten the existence of a trademark. Google is very aware of this. Although we often say that we “google” something, in 2017 a US court decided that Google was still a protected trademark. Because this decision may change over time, Google tries to discourage users from using “google” as a verb: “No googling, says Google - unless you really mean it.” [1]
Certain brands on the Slovenian market are also gradually becoming synonymous with specific products, such as Cedevita and Čokolino. For now, however, their recognition still represents a dream rather than a nightmare.