Band-Aid is a brand of adhesive bandages distributed by the American pharmaceutical and medical-devices company Johnson & Johnson. Invented in 1920, the brand has become a generic term for adhesive bandages in the United States and Australia.
Aqua-Lung was the first open-circuit, self-contained underwater breathing apparatus to reach worldwide popularity and commercial success. This class of equipment is now commonly referred to as a diving regulator or demand valve. The Aqua-Lung was invented in Paris during the winter of 1942–1943 by two Frenchmen: the engineer Émile Gagnan and Naval Lieutenant Jacques Cousteau. It allowed Cousteau and Gagnan to film and explore more easily underwater.
Extortion is a criminal offense of obtaining money, property, or services from an individual or institution, through coercion. It is sometimes euphemistically referred to as a "protection racket" since the racketeers often phrase their demands as payment for "protection" from threats from unspecified other parties; though often, and almost always, such "protection" is simply abstinence of harm from the same party, and such is implied in the "protection" offer. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime groups. The actual obtainment of money or property is not required to commit the offense. Making a threat of violence which refers to a requirement of a payment of money or property to halt future violence is sufficient to commit the offense. Exaction refers not only to extortion or the demanding and obtaining of something through force, but additionally, in its formal definition, means the infliction of something such as pain and suffering or making somebody endure something unpleasant.
Kleenex is a brand name for a variety of paper-based products such as facial tissue, bathroom tissue, paper towels, tampons, and diapers. Often used informally as a genericized trademark for facial tissue in the United States, the name Kleenex is a registered trademark of Kimberly-Clark Worldwide, Inc. Kleenex products are manufactured in 30 countries and sold in more than 170 countries. Kleenex brands include Cottonelle, Huggies, and VIVA.
A trademark is a word, phrase, or logo that identifies the source of goods or services. Trademark law protects a business' commercial identity or brand by discouraging other businesses from adopting a name or logo that is "confusingly similar" to an existing trademark. The goal is to allow consumers to easily identify the producers of goods and services and avoid confusion.
A trade name, trading name, or business name is a pseudonym frequently used by companies to operate under a name different from their registered, legal name. The term for this type of alternative name is a "fictitious" business name. Registering the fictitious name with the relevant government body is often required.
A generic trademark, also known as a genericized trademark or proprietary eponym, is a trademark or brand name that, due to its popularity or significance, has become the generic name for, or synonymous with, a general class of product or service, usually against the intentions of the trademark's holder. The process of a product's name becoming genericized is known as genericide.
The National Association of Realtors (NAR), whose member brokers are known as realtors, is a North American trade association for those who work in the real estate industry. It has over 1.1 million members, including NAR's institutes, societies, and councils, involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries. NAR also functions as a self-regulatory organization for real estate brokerage. The organization is headquartered in Chicago.
The term Listserv has been used to refer to electronic mailing list software applications in general, but is more properly applied to a few early instances of such software, which allows a sender to send one email to the list, and then transparently sends it on to the addresses of the subscribers to the list.
The Lanham (Trademark) Act is the primary federal trademark statute of law in the United States. The Act prohibits a number of activities, including trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and false advertising.
Ugg boots are a unisex style of sheepskin boot originating in Australia and New Zealand. The boots are typically made of twin-faced sheepskin with fleece on the inside, a tanned outer surface and a synthetic sole. The term, ugg boots, originated from Australia, initially for utilitarian footwear worn for warmth, and which were often worn by surfers during the 1960s. In the 1970s, the boots were introduced to the surf culture of the United Kingdom and the United States. Sheepskin boots became a fashion trend in the U.S. in the late 1990s and as a worldwide trend in the mid-2000s. In Australia, they are worn predominantly as slippers and often associated with "daggy" fashion sense and "bogan" culture.
In the United States, spackling paste is a putty used to fill holes, small cracks, and other minor surface defects in wood, drywall, and plaster. Typically, spackling is composed of gypsum plaster from hydrated calcium sulfate and glue.
The doctrine of foreign equivalents is a rule applied in United States trademark law which requires courts and the TTAB to translate foreign words in determining whether they are registrable as trademarks, or confusingly similar with existing marks. The doctrine is intended to protect consumers within the United States from confusion or deception caused by the use of terms in different languages. In some cases, a party will use a word as a mark which is either generic or merely descriptive of the goods in a foreign language, or which shares the same meaning as an existing mark to speakers of that foreign language.
Trademark distinctiveness is an important concept in the law governing trademarks and service marks. A trademark may be eligible for registration, or registrable, if it performs the essential trademark function, and has distinctive character. Registrability can be understood as a continuum, with "inherently distinctive" marks at one end, "generic" and "descriptive" marks with no distinctive character at the other end, and "suggestive" and "arbitrary" marks lying between these two points. "Descriptive" marks must acquire distinctiveness through secondary meaning - consumers have come to recognize the mark as a source indicator - to be protectable. "Generic" terms are used to refer to the product or service itself and cannot be used as trademarks.
The public domain consists of all the creative works to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable.
Ugg boots trademark disputes are the disputes between some footwear manufacturers, as to whether "ugg" is a protected trademark, or a generic term and thus ineligible for trademark protection. In Australia and New Zealand, where "Ugg" is a generic term for the style of footwear, 81 registered trademarks include the term "Ugg" in various logos and designs. By contrast, UGG is a registered trademark of the California-based company Deckers Outdoor Corporation in over 130 countries worldwide, including the U.S., the European Union, and China.
In United States trademark law, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. v. Hunting World, 537 F.2d 4 established the spectrum of trademark distinctiveness in the US, breaking trademarks into classes which are accorded differing degrees of protection. Courts often speak of marks falling along the following "spectrum of distinctiveness," also known within the US as the "Abercrombie classification" or "Abercrombie factors". The lawsuit was brought by Abercrombie & Fitch Co. against Hunting World, Inc. regarding Abercrombie's trademark on the word "Safari", and resulting in Abercrombie's loss of the trademark.
