Suppose you’re a famous artist and people want to buy your stuff, just because your name is on it. Then some knock-offs start signing their paintings with your name, just because they sell better that way. Who you gonna call? The signature police?

You gotta protect what’s yours, even if it’s just your name.

Just heard a television commercial for Band-Aids. Oops. Make that: BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages. Sometimes it is hard to remember that the little strip that we attach to our boo-boos isn’t called a Band-Aid. It is a bandage. Technically, it is an “adhesive bandage” if it is the peel-and-stick kind.

On the commercial, the kid is singing the old jingle and I can mentally sing along because it’s the same thing I’ve heard since I was a kid scuffing up my elbows in bicycle crashes. Here’s how it goes:

I am stuck on Band-Aids, cuz Band-Aid’s stuck on me!

Except, that isn’t how this kid sang it. His version had one more word: Brand. “I am stuck on Band-Aid’s brand, cuz Band-Aid’s stuck on me!” Still works musically. Half-notes instead of the whole-note. In doing that, the company protects its registered® copyright.

Hopefully.

Here’s the thing. If a company’s name becomes identified as its product, the term becomes generic. Here’s an example.

Aspirin.

In a lot of countries, even to this day, that would be in big letters as the brand name for a product – acetylsalicylic acid. As in Aspirin brand Pain Reliever. In the US, it has become Bayer® brand aspirin. Because in the US, Aspirin® did not protect the name from becoming generic.

Here are a few others: linoleum (maybe the first one to become generic, in 1878 (note that none have a capital letter in front, which they all would have had as a brand name); thermos (1963), dry ice, escalator, videotape (already pretty much obsolete), cellophane, and – get this – heroin.

Heroin was trademarked by Bayer® Company back in 1898. They got distracted for some reason and failed to protect the brand name. Who’d ’a thought?

There are plenty of others. Kerosine. Lanoline. Except, these days, they are kerosene and lanoline. No CAPS. Generic terms, assimilated into the language collective. It is fu-tile to resist.

There are some companies that have battled the Big-G in keeping their name off the generic list. Some are continually misused.

“Will you hand me a kleenex?”

No. Sorry. It’s a Kleenex® brand facial tissue.

“Well, then. Will you xerox this for me?”

Nah. I can photocopy it on the Xerox® brand copy machine.

In our part of the world, we don’t often hear people ask us for a soda pop. Don’t even hear those terms separately. As in, Let’s get a soda. Or – wanna get a pop?

Mostly, we hear, “Ahhhhh, Ma. We weren’t doin’ nothin’… We was just out gettin’ a coke.

No. It’s a Coke® brand soft drink, bottled by Coca-Cola®. And it stays that way only as long as the company continues to run advertising that makes it clear that the name is a brand name associated with a product. Nothing generic.

And – just so you think of this when you see the Band-Aid® brand adhesive bandage commercial, print it out and stick in on the fridge with some scotch-tape (or Scotch brand cellophane adhesive tape), or – just use a post-it® note. Ooops. Post-it® brand self-sticking note.

Meanwhile, I’ll get a brillo pad® and some clorox® and clean up the Book Shop®.

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main, Broken Arrow OK!