Comment by jxdxbx
4 hours ago
The top comment there is not correct. You do not have to "defend" trademarks or they "expire."
You lose a trademark if it becomes generic, regardless of how hard you tried to keep it from being so. Obviously if you let a bunch of actual infringements slide you're on the way to becoming generic, but all that matters is whether the trademark IS generic.
But, when lawyers write letters to people saying "you can't say escalator or Zamboni" you can just ignore them. Using a trademark in writing in a way that a trademark owner does not like is not infringement.
You definitely need to provide evidence of use.
https://www.dreyfus.fr/en/2025/03/18/proof-of-use-in-the-uni...
> You lose a trademark if it becomes generic
And this is my biggest gripe with products from well-known companies that use already generic terms like "Apple", "Word", "X", or "Inkwell". I understand claiming exclusivity of words like "Microsoft Word", but not for the word "Word" itself.
In the business, we often refer to that sort of reminder activity as "defending" against genericism. Practice varies by country but the point is often to show that you are not passively allowing the trade mark to become generic. Yes, you can often ignore letters (unless they request an answer or make a threat, which might be a different situation) - but it's usually a good idea to spend some time looking at it from the other person's perspective first.
Yeah, but there are a TON of things that trademark lawyers do that are counter-productive. I put vaguely aggressive letters from trademark owners in that category, such as Monster energy drinks thinking they get to control how others use the word "monster."
I remember when the Apple logo stickers Apple packed in had a little (R), which was later dropped, since it's ugly and not legally required. But no doubt some lawyer advised putting it there to begin with.