this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
221 points (95.5% liked)

News

23376 readers
1901 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is it because it reaches a critical mass of usage, so the people get to take it back?

It's not my point but that's literally how it legally works in the US. That's why Velcro insists on calling their product "Velcro brand hook and loop fastener"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's actually pretty common too. Just off the top of my head: Cleanex, Xerox and Nintendo have all had to do similar things to protect their trademark.

[–] mindbleach 3 points 1 year ago

And those are brand names. This is just a generic promotion of a common product on a particular weekday. Which day is obvious because it alliterates with the food. Surely most people were surprised to hear anyone claimed to own the concept. Has it not been occasionally present at every cafeteria throughout their life?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Escalator was once a brand name.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They really started padding it towards the end to get to 50 but the first half or so of this listicle has a lot of good examples, quite a few that I didn't know

https://www.impactplus.com/blog/50-everyday-words-that-started-as-brands-and-trademarks

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

TIL about trademark erosion. Also, thanks for a proper response.

Trademark erosion, or genericization, is a special case of antonomasia related to trademarks. It happens when a trademark becomes so common that it starts being used as a common name and the original company has failed to prevent such use.

I guess Nintendo fought it successfully by getting the world to call the thing a “game console” rather than calling it a Nintendo. Hoover failed to defend the verb “Hoover” and lost it.

In this case, it just seems like the win is for Taco Bell and their efforts to gain, use and profit from the term. And that makes it feel a little gross and brutish. They could prove me wrong though.