- Philip
> Don,
>
> Whether or not a term is generic has nothing to do with its legality. When
> I was a kid any refrigerator was a frigidaire. Never once did we worry that
> we'd get sued or go to prison for it. It's sort of a catch-22 for the
> corporate world. Make you product ubiquitous enough, and it becomes common
> usage. Every ad man's (and woman's) dream is to bash the product name so
> deep in the public's psyche that that the first thing they think of when
> they think of bleach or a refrigerator is their product. Get irritated at
> Frigidaire or Clorox, not the public, they didn't set out to steal the
> name. GM spent millions trying to make this happen and then cries when it
> does. Boo hoo, I feel real sorry for them.
>
> Speaking of GM, one of the biggest boo boo's in public relations history
> was the roll out of Ford's Edsel. They hired the Glenn Miller Orchestra to
> be there, Glenn was long dead of course. No one noticed until afterwards
> that every musician was sitting behind a music stand with 2 foot high
> letters blarring out "GM."
>
> I got to make this short as I've got a lot of Xeroxing to do on my Canon
> copier.
>
> --Dick
>
>
>
>
>
> At 10:13 AM 12/5/97 -0500, you wrote:
> >In a message dated 97-11-22 13:13:40 EST, Dick Sullivan writes:
> >
> >>
> >>That's why I said plain Clorox. Ain't that sort of like frigidaire, a
> >>generic term now?
> >
> >I worked at Frigidaire for three months short of 30 years, and Frigidaire is
> >NOT a generic word. It is a registered trade mark, first of General Motors
> >(Frigidaire was a division of GM until 1979), and currently of White
> >Consolidated, who bought it. All 25 thousand GM-Frigidaire, and the couple of
> >thousand White-Frigidaire employees would scream if they thought people
> >considered it as generic.
> >
> >"Hover" sweepers have been concerned about mis-use of their name as well,
> >since in England, to vacuum your house is to hover it. And, of course, Xerox,
> >Coke and Kleenex are other old names. When we make copies, we do make Xerox
> >copies, as our xerographic copier is a Xerox brand.
> >
> >Not trying to flame, and I hope this doesn't start a long thread on trade
> >names, but you hit a sore spot with me. Almost as bad as people saying "Look
> >at the PITCHER" when they mean "Look at the picture." When I teach, I
> have a
> >picture of a pitcher that I immediatly bring out when that happens. Works
> >pretty well, too.
> >
> > :-)
> >
> >Don
> >
>
>
> Bostick & Sullivan
> PO Box 16639, Santa Fe
> NM 87506
> 505-474-0890 FAX 505-474-2857
> <http://www.bostick-sullivan.com>http://www.bostick-sullivan.com
>
>
>
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Philip Trauring 340 W. 87th Street #2B
philip@cs.brandeis.edu New York, NY 10024
phone (212) 877-8365 fax (212) 504-8088
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