RE: Don't you dare say "levitator!"

[Richard Grandy <rgrandy@ruf.rice.edu>]

Jack, I think you are missing the crucial distinction.  Before the
trademark Xerox was invented, there was no word "xerox" in the langauge;
before the trademark Kleenex was invented, there was no word "kleenex".  We
could test this by looking at dictionaries published at the time of
trademarking.

On the other hand, I would bet you, seriously, that I can find the word
"levitator" in dictionaries published before the Superconductive
Components, Inc. Trademark.

I think that most of us recognize that if you coin a new term, even if it
is a minor variant of an earlier word like "xerography", that you have a
claim.  But it seems outrageous to allow claims to pre-existing words.

Richard Grandy
Philosophy
Rice University (neighbor to Paul Chu)


At 9:24 PM -0500 7/1/98, C wrote:
> Hi all-
> 	I think that Beatty's posting was what a lawyer (like me) would call
> a cheap shot.   The posting was:
> *********************************************************
> > You have a new entry in your guestbook:
> > ------------------------------------------------------
> > On your home page, as you scroll down and get to Some Maglev Links,
> > Under *NASA LARGE GAP levitator.  Please note that the Term Levitator is
> > TRADEMARKED by Superconductive Components Inc.  Thank you.  Bryan
> > Jeffries <bjeffries@SuperconductiveComp.com> Columbus , Oh USA -
> > Tuesday, June 30, 1998 at 23:06:12 (PDT)
> > ------------------------------------------------------
>
> Quite a reprehensible action of an out-of-control legal department,
> wouldn't you say?
>
> If you dare to tell your students that your superconductive demonstration
> is a "levitator", watch out, they might come after you!  Next I suppose
> that Microsoft will warn us against using their trademarked term
> "software", and Nike will try to make you put (tm) after all uses of the
> word "swoosh."
> ***********************************
> 	The owner of the trademark has a legitimate concern that the
> trademarked
> name might come into common usage and take on a generic meaning.  If that
> happens,
> then the owner loses his trademark rights.  The classic examples are
> "aspirin" for
> a certain chemical compound and "hoover" for vacuum cleaner.  So what the
> attorney
> was telling you, perhaps as inarticulately as most 27 year olds (I
> suppose) was:
> DON'T STEAL!
> 				Regards,
> 					Jack
>
>
> 	"I scored the next great triumph for science myself,
> to wit, how the milk gets into the cow.  Both of us
> had marveled over that mystery a long time.  We had
> followed the cows around for years - that is, in the
> daytime - but had never caught them drinking fluid of
> that color."
> 		Mark Twain, Extract from Eve's
> 		Autobiography