Trademark Genericide And One Big Way The DOJ Admits That Its Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google Is Utter Garbage
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201020/11340745544/trademark-genericide-one-big-way-doj-admits-that-antitrust-lawsuit-against-google-is-utter-garbage.shtml
Don't misread the title of this post to think there's only one thing wrong with the DOJ's antitrust complaint against Google. There's plenty. But on the list is this particular self-defeating argument included in the complaint -- the complaint where the DOJ basically has but one job: show that Google is a monopoly.
To understand it, we need to first understand the idea of "trademark genericide." That's what happens when your brand name is, well, just too good and people start using your branding as the default word to describe the product or service in general. Famous examples include "Band-Aid," "Thermos," "Xerox," and plenty of other words we're all used to using in lower-case form to describe things that aren't actually produced by the companies that had those trademarks.