While there is nothing a trademark owner can do to guarantee that the trademark will never be lost through genericide, there are things a trademark owner can do to lessen the risk of genericide. Always using a trademark as an adjective to describe a particular brand of a product or service rather than as a
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Genericide occurs when a trademark becomes a common generic name for a product or service. ESCALATOR is an example. At one time, it was a trademark for a particular brand of moving stairway. After a while, people came to use it as a generic word for any moving stairway, from any source. Now it is
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Generic marks are words, symbols, etc. that describe an entire category of products or services rather than identifying a particular source of a product or service. Milk, if used as a trademark for milk, is an example. It identifies a product, not the source of it. Trademark rights cannot be claimed in generic terms for
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The 5-tier distinctiveness pyramid developed by Minnesota attorney Thomas James is a conceptual and visual aid for understanding the different levels of distinctiveness a trademark may have. The five levels, from least to most distinctive, are: Generic Descriptive Suggestive Arbitrary Fanciful.
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