I commonly hear people saying that, but then other people claiming this isn't true.

Is there a clear source for this mechanism?

dec0dedab0de 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The problem is if it becomes a normal word in everyday use, then it can lose it's trademark. I suspect it will happen to google soon, I definitely have heard people say they googled something on bing. Wikipedia has this list of trademarks that were lost this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...

This issue with Notepad++ isn't even really about trademark, even though that would be the legal means to enforce it. It's more about Criteria #4 of the opensource definition "Integrity of The Author’s Source Code" Which is there so you can't give the original project a bad name while forking it. https://opensource.org/osd

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rpdillon 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People say it's not true because people confuse copyright and trademark. It isn't true for copyright at all, but it is true for trademark.

Incidentally, this is why Richard Stallman objects to the term intellectual property. It bundles together three very different areas of property rights (copyright, trademark, and patents) and treats them as sort of a single entity, even though they're really very different, both in their reason for existing and in their mechanisms.

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msla 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> People say it's not true because people confuse copyright and trademark. It isn't true for copyright at all, but it is true for trademark.

People believe so many dumb things about copyright, trademark, patents, and trade secrets. For example: You don't legally need to use the various symbols for trademarks and copyrights you don't own. Unless there's a contract in force saying you have to, there's no Symbol Police gonna rappel from the skylights and break your keyboard if you say you used a Xerox without the nifty ™ symbol.

Another thing I've seen is the apparent notion that you can "renew" a copyright. Nope, not for a long time now: You get the full term up front with no special action, and once it's done it's gone, unless the law is actually changed in the meantime. Disney didn't "renew" the copyright on "Steamboat Willie" and the dumb live-action remakes aren't being done to "renew" anything, they're just some executive having a brain fart.

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J-Kuhn 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well, if you are Disney, it turns out you can - by having the law changed just before the thing would go into the public domain.

	▲	msla 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you've noticed, Disney has stopped doing that. New stuff is entering the Public Domain. Like "Steamboat Willie", which I believe was mentioned here recently.

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6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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intrikate 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It was a big enough deal that Nintendo put out advertisements in 1990 [0], asking people to not use "a Nintendo" to refer generically to other video game systems, specifically out of fear of genericization.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/5m9grz/theres_no_...

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munk-a 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can find examples in each direction but, considering the potential damage of not defending a trademark, it's usually worth being quite proactive about that defense.

There isn't a clear source (at least that I'm aware of) since this is handled by the legal system with a lot of nuance on a case by case basis. It is very reasonable to be proactive in trademark defense but if you aren't courts may still side with you if the establishment of usage was clear.

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jmuguy 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A pretty recent example would be Twitter https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnbbrandon/2026/01/06/operati...

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moduspol 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Don't Say Velcro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRi8LptvFZY

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7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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OhMeadhbh 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

15 U.S.C. § 1127