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by dharmab 874 days ago
Revzilla and Partzilla also had a long legal conflict over the *zilla name.
1 comments

It's pretty clear that "zilla" is a genericised word suffix, cf "bridezilla", in English.

Whilst it seems to originate with Godzilla -- which honestly also doesn't seem to associate with a particular company but instead I would say it's a now traditional monster name in stories, like Dracula -- noone is confusing this with any Godzilla franchise. These sort of attempts to own a word sten, across trademark categories, are an over-step that legislators need to rein in IMO.

Does the recent Sky trademark battle speak to this?

This comment is entirely my opinion and does not relate to my employer.

> Whilst it seems to originate with Godzilla -- which honestly also doesn't seem to associate with a particular company but instead I would say it's a now traditional monster name in stories, like Dracula

This is a really weird take. Dracula is in the public domain, while every piece of Godzilla media is still copyrighted and trademarked to Toho, one of the big four movie studios of Japan.

What do you find “really weird”?

Dracula debuted in 1897 while Godzilla debuted in 1954.

Isn’t this the main reason one is public domain already and the other is not?