The following three lists of generic and genericized trademarks are:
- marks that were originally legally protected trademarks, but have been genericized and have lost their legal status due to becoming generic terms,
- marks that have been abandoned and are now generic terms
- marks that are still legally protected as trademarks, at least in some jurisdictions
List of former trademarks that have been genericized
The following partial list contains marks which were originally legally protected trademarks, but which have subsequently lost legal protection as trademarks by becoming the common name of the relevant product or service, as used both by the consuming public and commercial competitors. These marks were determined in court to have become generic. Some marks retain trademark protection in certain countries despite being declared generic in others.
Airfryer: Trademark owned by Philips in various jurisdictions, but invalidated in the United States due to its being merely a descriptive term, and withdrawn in the European Union.
Aspirin: Still a Bayer trademark name for acetylsalicylic acid in about 80 countries, including Canada and many countries in Europe, but declared generic in the U.S.
Cellophane:Still a registered trademark of Innovia Films Ltd in Europe and many other jurisdictions. Genericized in the U.S. Originally a trademark of DuPont. A thin, transparent sheet made of regenerated cellulose.
Circline:Originally a trademark of General Electric of ring shaped fluorescent lamps. Became generic in the United States and Canada.
Dry ice:Trademarked by the Dry Ice Corporation of America in 1925. A solid form of carbon dioxide.
Escalator:Originally a trademark of Otis Elevator Company and it was a registered trademark until 1950.
Flip phone: Originally a trademark of Motorola.
Flit gun: Originally trademarked as a dispenser for Flit, a brand of insecticide manufactured by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (later Exxon).
Heroin: Trademarked by Friedrich Bayer & Co in 1898. Trademark lost in some nations in the Treaty of Versailles, in 1919.
Hovercraft: Trademarked by Saunders-Roe.
Kerosene:A clear, flammable liquid derived from coal and bitumen. Originally coined around 1852 by Canadian geologist and physicist Abraham Gesner, and now referring to the general term for any similar form of lamp fuel.
Lanolin: Trademarked as the term for a preparation of water and the wax from sheep's wool.
Launderette: Coin laundry shop. Telecoin-Bendix trademark, for coin laundries of Telecoin-adapted Bendix machines.
Laundromat: Coin laundry shop. Westinghouse trademark, registered in the U.S. in the 1940s (automatic washing machine) and 1950s (coin laundry) but now expired.
Linoleum: Floor covering, originally coined by Frederick Walton in 1864, and ruled as generic following a lawsuit for trademark infringement in 1878; probably the first product name to become a generic term.
Lyocell: Originally a brand name owned by Lenzing, an Austrian-based company, for a viscose-type fiber fabricated via the NMMO process. In the meantime Lyocell is a generic name used by various manufacturers.
Mimeograph: Originally trademarked by Albert Dick. A low-cost printing press that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper.
Quonset: A trademark of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation for a brand of hemicylindrical prefabricated structures, first deployed at Quonset Point, Rhode Island
Sellotape: Sellotape is a British brand of transparent, cellulose-based, pressure-sensitive adhesive tape, and is the leading brand in the United Kingdom. Sellotape is generally used for joining, sealing, attaching and mending. The term has become a genericised trademark in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Nigeria, Ghana, New Zealand, Israel, India, Serbia, Japan, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Malaysia, Macedonia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, and is used much in the same way that Scotch tape came to be used in Canada, France, Italy and the United States, in referring to any brand of clear adhesive tape.
Spidola: A brand created by the Latvian manufacturer VEF, but widely used in the Soviet Union to refer to all transistor radios.
Teleprompter: The word TelePrompTer, with internal capitalization, originated in the 1950s as a trade name used by the TelePrompTer Corporation, for their television prompting apparatus.
Thermos: Originally a trademark of Thermos GmbH (Germany), thermos has referred generically to vacuum-insulated containers in the U.S. since 1963. It remains a trademark in much of the rest of the world.
Trampoline: Originally a trademark of the Griswold-Nissen Trampoline & Tumbling Company.
Videotape: Originally trademarked by Ampex Corporation, an early manufacturer of audio and video tape recorders.
List of former trademarks that have since become generic terms due to reasons other than genericization
The following partial list contains marks which were originally legally protected trademarks, but which have subsequently lost legal protection as trademarks due to abandonment, non-renewal or improper issuance (the generic term predated the registration). Some marks retain trademark protection in certain countries despite being generic in others.
Ani-Manga: Originally as a trademark of Viz Media which became an umbrella term for anime and manga after its trademark expired on October 28, 2016.
App Store: Trademark claimed by Apple Inc. for their digital distribution platform. Apple filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com over Appstore for Amazon, but abandoned the lawsuit after an early rejection of Apple's false advertising claim in the lawsuit. As part of the settlement, Apple gave Amazon a covenant not to sue, so that Amazon would drop its counterclaim to have the registration cancelled. the trademark, reg. no. 4,829,304, remains "Issued and Active" at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Dumpster: Trademark was cancelled in 2015. Trademarked by Dempster Brothers, Inc. in 1963, dumpster is originally a portmanteau of the word dump and the last name Dempster. It originally appeared in the 1951 product name Dempster Dumpster, while related patents date back to 1937.
Multiball: Used to refer to a state on a pinball machine where two or more balls are present on the playfield simultaneously and can be accessed by the flippers. Trademarked by WMS Industries in 1981 as "Multi-ball" and by Templar Studios in 2000 as "Multiball." "Multiball" was abandoned as a trademark in 2001, and "Multi-ball" was canceled in 2002.
Super glue: Formerly trademarked by Loctite Corporation, but the trademark was canceled by a court ruling in 1981, which found that the term had always been generic. The term "The Original Super Glue" is still trademarked by Pacer Technology.
Super Hero: Formally held jointly by Marvel Comics and DC Comics, the trademark was challenged by a comic book artist that argued the term had become generic. The USPTO cancelled the marks in September 2024.
Taco Tuesday: A social/family event or sales promotion relating to consuming tacos on a Tuesday; held by GregoryâÂÂs Restaurant and Bar in New Jersey and Taco John's in the other 49 states until 2023, when the companies abandoned their trademark registrations after Taco Bell filed petitions with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel the marks.
Touch-tone: Dual tone multi-frequency telephone signaling; AT&T states "formerly a trademark of AT&T".
Webster's Dictionary: The publishers with the strongest link to the original are Merriam-Webster, but they have a trademark only on "Merriam-Webster", and other dictionaries are legally published as "Webster's Dictionary".
Yo-Yo: Still a Papa's Toy Co. Ltd. trademark name for a spinning toy in Canada, but was determined that the trademark was improperly issued.
ZIP Code: Originally registered as a United States Postal Service service mark but has since expired.
Zipper: Originally a trademark of B.F. Goodrich for use in rubber boots.
List of protected trademarks frequently used as generic terms
Marks in this partial list are still legally protected as trademarks, at least in some jurisdictions, but are sometimes used by consumers in a generic sense. Unlike the names in the list above, these names are still widely known by the public as brand names, and are not used by competitors. Scholars disagree as to whether the use of a recognized trademark name for similar products can truly be called "generic", or if it is instead a form of synecdoche.
The previous list contains trademarks that have completely lost their legal status in some countries, while the following list contains marks which have been registered as trademarks, continue in use, and are actively enforced by their trademark owners. Writing guides such as the AP Stylebook advise writers to "use a generic equivalent unless the trademark is essential to the story".
References