How much attention do you pay to trademarks? Mistakenly use one to refer to a generic product, and you can land yourself with a letter from the company concerned’s trademark lawyers, and the need to write embarrassing apologies, writes Cathy Relf.
While it’s OK to tweak trademarks slightly to bring them into line with standard English (for example More Than, rather than MORE TH>N), it’s not OK to use a trademarked name to describe a product not made by that company.
In some cases, the horse has already bolted – ‘Hoover’ is now almost synonymous with ‘vacuum cleaner’, for example, regardless of the brand. But use ‘Thermos’ to describe a vacuum flask not made by Thermos and you’re on dodgy ground.
Take our quiz to see how trademark-aware you are. For each item, decide whether it’s a current trademark, a lapsed trademark or a red herring. To make it more difficult, we’ve written them all with an initial capital.
After you submit your answers, you’ll get an explanation of each one.
How did you do? Let us know below, and if you know of any other trademark trivia, please share.
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Bah, three wrong! I was tripped up by escalator, moped and heroin. Great explanations afterwards, thanks.
Aaah, got Aspirin wrong, but only because it -IS- a trademark name where I live. Didn’t realise it varied.
Also got Lycra wrong (really, it’s still a TM? How annoying…). Had never heard of “Tannoy” (and therefore assumed it was a TM), so I learned something new today!
Which country are you in, Kell? We think you should award yourself an honorary point for that one.
At least I can now avoid those awkward situations at the pharmacy when I ask for china white, fix, horse, smack, whack and junk, only to get a blank stare from my ‘man’.
Yes, most pharmacists these days are quite happy to serve you if you just ask for aspirin.