[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/15... (from wikipedia sources)

> plaintiffs have failed to present sufficient evidence in this case to support a jury finding that the relevant public primarily understands the word "google" as a generic name for internet search engines and not as a mark identifying the Google search engine in particular.

I wonder what kind of evidence might actually be used. My lived experience has me telling people that I googled something despite my default search engine being DDG on all of my devices. One can’t really present the myriad spoken conversations which include this use as evidence in court, so what would they do?

Slightly aside: the “correct” examples that are given are always amusing but there’s something about Adobe’s double copyright symbol that hits me harder. That is too funny, not least because they’re 100% serious-face about it.

[zuminator]

I think in Google's favor, their service is so utterly dominant[0] as a search engine that when someone asks you to google something they have a high expectation that it will be done on Google. As opposed to someone asking you to hoover up a mess but they don't really form an internal model of which vacuum cleaner you'll use, or asking to "borrow" a kleenex with no concern as to which brand of tissue you give them.

So even though you personally use DDG, surely there are still vastly more searches on Google than on all other search engines combined so there's no immediate danger of dilution.

I do have a question though for people familiar with trademark law. Why can't they just do away with the trademark dilution rule? So what if I want to go "rollerblading" on pair of K2s [1]? Why should Rollerblade be at risk of losing their trademark? Who is being served by this rule? It just seems to incentivize litigious behavior.

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share (note that they easily beat all other search engines combined

[1] https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health-products/g46167391/b... (Good Housekeeping has no problem genericizing rollerblade all throughout this article. Perhaps unlike Velcro, Nordica is ok with this?)

[kube-system]

> I do have a question though for people familiar with trademark law. Why can't they just do away with the trademark dilution rule?

It’s not really a rule. It’s that genericization undermines the rationale for trademark protection.

Trademarks are granted to give a business exclusive use of an identifier in conjunction with a particular product or service in order to protect consumers from marketplace confusion.

For example, USPTO has granted a trademark for “iPhone” so that when consumers buy an “iPhone” they get what they expect. A phone made by Apple Inc. When people say “iPhone” they’re definitely talking about Apple Inc phones.

However, if consumers themselves don’t care, and they use a term to refer to any brand, even when they know it is from a different origin, then the word is no longer serving the purpose for which the trademark was granted.

Otis Elevator company doesn’t have a trademark on “Escalator” anymore because literally nobody cares what company manufactured the moving stairs they’re going up. Nobody is harmed, confused, or misled when other makes of moving stairs are called “escalators”.

[smegger001]

Ironicly your example is one where Apple initially used someone else's trademarked brandname. IPhone had been initially owned and used by infogear and later was acquired by Cisco and used for a line of VoIP connected phones. Apple tried to negotiate a deal for the name but announced the Apple iPhone before they had actually finished negotiations over the name. Leading to a large legal battle that was eventually settled out of court where both companies were allowed to sell phones under the trademarked iPhone name.

[kube-system]

And speaking of Cisco, "IOS" for that matter too.

[Digit-Al]

The problem with replacing "googling" for me is that, as far as I can tell, no one has come up with any better term. I, like yourself, tend to use DDG mostly and would prefer not to say "googling", but saying "web searching" is more wordy and clumsy.

We really need to come up with another term that is more generic but just as snappy and easy to say as "googling".

[phreack]

Law is weird, but in real life people use google as a verb meaning "search on the internet" every single time. When a public figure says something like "look it up on Google" instead of "google it" (and you an almost hear the © in the former), that almost always means they've been in long talks with Google representatives about an ad campaign and they urged the speaker to not use the brand as a verb.

[JohnFen]

> I wonder what kind of evidence might actually be used.

IANAL, but perhaps the dividing line isn't whether or not the term is commonly used as a generic one, but whether people are not generally aware that it's a brand name. I wasn't aware that "Velcro" was a brand name for a long time, for instance.

I think the majority of people using "google" generically are also fully aware that "Google" is a brand name.

So the evidence would be some sort of study showing that people think it's really generic?