[Legend2440]

Plenty of companies use generic words for their name, and they still get trademarks.

American Airlines for example is indeed just an American airline. The Container Store, Vision Center, General Motors, International business machines (IBM), the list goes on.

Even Microsoft is just a contraction of their original product, microcomputer software.

[DrammBA]

I understood it more in the line of preventing a company from naming itself "Low sugar" and then blocking other companies from adding the words "Low sugar" to their packaging. Same thing with OpenAI, another company should be free to create an AI that's fully open and tag it as "Open AI" without fearing legal problems with OpenAI.

[josefx]

> is indeed just an American airline.

I would say there is nothing descriptive about calling something American. America doesn't even refer to a single country, does it operate out of Brazil? Would that even be relevant information to anyone using an Airline?

[raverbashing]

> Even Microsoft is just a contraction of their original product, microcomputer software.

Hopefully that was also a family suggestion because I can't think of a more sloppy name than "Microcomputer software"

[literalAardvark]

In the US

[Legend2440]

Many of these companies have EU trademarks as well.