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Protecting your brand name

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What happens when your company brand name becomes part of the public domain? Do you complain? Do you contact your lawyers? Do you thank your customers and then thank your lucky (hah!) stars that you are a verb?

Ask Google and Apple. No easy answer, you say? It's called protecting your brand? But what about the lawyers? Do we worry about what they do to your brand? Really, are they stewards of your brand or are they about risk management?

You enjoy your verb status in the beginning but then you are past the point of no return. Does your brand name belong to the world or can you (or rather your lawyers) reclaim it?

It's called being a victim of your own success. Albeit one that nobody feels sorry for.

What's a brand to do? It's a quandry.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 15, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 15, 2006
    And when I lived in California, we called all soft drinks "Coke" (as in  "do you want a Coke?" / "Yes, please"/"what kind?"/ "7-Up". Where were the brand police then?

    I almost think that these companies should consider launching their new products with an accompanying verb that they don't mind getting sullied by all us riff-raff.

  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2006
    Ed- interesting. Also, Hormel has done a lot to show they have a sense of humor (the TV ads) which I suspect helped their brand cause. I think the diff between Hormel and Apple and Google is that Hormel embraced it and figured out how to leverage it (goodwill derived from the avoidance of visible and perceived unreasonable legal activity). Good example of a company managing the same issues elegantly.

  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2006
    Interesting. I hadn't thought about google as being the generic word for search as much as a verb (but still denoting usage of their specific search engine). I haven't heard anyone using the verb google in combination with another search engine. So it will be interesting to see what happens.

  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2006
    I just googled my mac off at the pool.

  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2006
    Too much information Jim S. :)

  • Anonymous
    August 17, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    August 19, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    August 19, 2006
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  • Anonymous
    August 20, 2006
    >suing people for use of the work "pod"
    oh is that whats going on? Yuck, not cool at all.
    Jobs is fascinating - I highly recommend "Infinite Loop" and "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs".

  • Anonymous
    July 06, 2007
    Yes i am also wondering that, is this process of conversion of brand in to generic good for the companies? Can brand names become legally generic? And after being legallygeneric can all companies use the brand name with the company name? Really a good topic for researching

  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2009
    The comment has been removed