Jump to content

Talk:Generic trademark/Archives/2016

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Requested move 6 April 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. There is a feeling that the two terms are slightly different - genericized trademark is a subset of generic trademark, and that the article should probably make that clearer, and be expanded to include generic trademarks that are not genericized trademarks. There are some good arguments made on both sides, but all in all no consensus, and the current four year title is the default stable one to remain with for now.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:41, 20 May 2016 (UTC)


Generic trademark → Genericized trademark – Present name is an irrational oxymoron, and thus confusing to readers. There is no such thing as a "generic trademark"; if it's generic, it is not a trademark, even if it once had been. A (former) trademark can become genericized, and is then a genericized trademark, in the same sense that a cut-off leg is an amputated limb. It is still an ungainly construction; trademark genericization is really what this article is about, and is the most logical and WP:PRECISE term, but some might object on WP:CONCISE grounds, and I would weakly agree that genericized trademark is clear enough to use in the context of this article. By way of direct analogy, a (former) crime may have been legalized; in a particular context it can be called a legalized crime, but it is not a "legal crime". PS: I'm using -ize not -ise because the article already does. While "generic trademark" does occur in some sources, I see no evidence that it's the most common usage, and more to the point a) it is not the proper legal usage (i.e., the usage in sources that are actually reliable on this legal topic); and b) even if it were the common name we could still reject it on the basis that it fails WP:AT policy by being reader-confusing.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:48, 6 April 2016 (UTC) --Relisted. Steel1943 (talk) 18:16, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

  • Oppose. You may think it's "irrational", but it is the common name, and COMMONNAME is policy. Your other variations don't appear in the ngram - Ngrams not found: genericized trademark, genericised trademark, trademark genericization, trademark genericisation. As for "proper legal usage", googling "generic trademark" brings up on the very first page this from the website of an actual law firm and this from the website of the American University Law Review. This from the website of the William & Mary Law Review is on the second page of results. What would really be "reader confusing" would be to title articles with obscure or made-up names because we're trying to be prescriptive rather than descriptive and calling things what we think they "should" be called. After all, as Voltaire said, the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Egsan Bacon (talk) 13:27, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
    • See Dicklyon's note below. They're not even the same topic. Thanks for the lecture, though. You need to actually read WP:COMMONNAME. It is a small part of the policy, and not at all the most important part. We pick the common name as the most likely to pass the five actual naming WP:CRITERIA. COMMONNAME gives us a first choice to run through the CRITERIA tests, nothing more, and we quite often do not use the most common name, because it fails one or more of them, as is the case here (fails WP:PRECISE and, since it's confused even WP editors into writing about the wrong topic, also WP:RECOGNIZABLE; they're mis-recognizing it as something else. Either way, the present name is wrong and has to go.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:36, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Support – I agree with Egsan Bacon that "generic trademark" is not an oxymoron, and is more common. However, a quick look at definitions of "generic trademark" in books shows that it does not mean the same thing as "genericized trademark". Based on a quick look at the lead, the latter is the intended topic of the article. Compare the definition of genericized in this book. The only sources that compare or equate these terms appear to derive from our wikipedia article. The whole point of the "ize" is to denote the transition from trademark to generic. Dicklyon (talk) 17:02, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
    • If AjaxSmack's summary below is correct ("term not afforded trademark protection because it is generic"), then it is in fact an oxymoron, just an apparently intentional and slightly wry one, like "deceased patient", "advanced beginner", "casual intimacy", "dress-casual", etc., or maybe just unintentionally funny like "crisis management" and "humanitarian invasion". :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:47, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Support per User:Dicklyon. I was going to sit this one out but after reading some of the sources linked in User:Dicklyon's Google Books search, I realize that a genericized trademark is a subset of a generic trademark. As this source points out, a generic trademark is any term not afforded trademark protection because it is generic. The example given is there is the company "Imported Auto Parts"; another is "24 Hour Fitness". Neither of these has been genericized but both are generic. Based on sources, "genericized trademark" better represents the narrower scope of this article. —  AjaxSmack  01:58, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Generic_trademark/Archives/2016&oldid=1136756700"