Reply to When did a playpen become a pack n' play?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a trademark attorney so this drives me batty.  Pack n play is a registered trademark.  Graco (owner of that brand) came up with an updated playpen (with a changer attached, etc.) and it really took off.  It's taken off so much that many people use the mark as the generic term, unfortunately.  Modern generic term=play yard.[/quote]

So when you need a Q-tip, do you ask for a cotton swap? Do you say adhesive strip instead of band-aid?[/quote]

She's a trademark attorney, so she has to care.  When people use the term to refer to other companies' products, it weakens the trademark.  Then they have to go around policing the misuse of the mark.[/quote]

I suppose that a trademark attorney should know, but I would have thought that have America think that your company's is the very definition of the product woudl be a good thing.  Anyway, where I grew up, you offered guests a Coke, a Kleenex, and made Xerox copies. [/quote] I took a business law class and some marketing classes in college. It actually weakens the trademark. Aspirin and escalator also started out as trademarked brand specific names but when everyone uses the word "aspirin" in lieu of analgesic it's cheapened because no one says "I need a Bayor" it can mean ANY brand, not just that specific brand and then the company loses money to a competitor who is taking advantage of the goodwill the original Aspirin company built. So the original Aspirin company spends years and money branding their product and getting people to trust it and then someone else comes along, slaps the word "aspirin" on their product and essentially steals the work the original company put into branding themselves and getting people to want and trust it in the first place. Does that make sense? There's a lot of products like that out there, but aspirin ad escalator are the only two I specifically remember.

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