Brand Names: Will \'Ipad\' Become Generic Word

¶ … Brand Names: Will 'iPad' Become Generic Word for Tablet?" was published by the U.S.A. Today, with the central premise concerning a relatively unknown yet ubiquitous phenomenon known as genericide. According to the article, which was compiled by the Associated Press (AP), Apple Inc. And its proprietary iPad tablet computing device is poised to alter the English lexicon through its supremacy within a particular market segment. Like the Band-Aid and Kleenex before it, the iPad has become so synonymous with a niche product that consumers invariably refer to competitor's offerings by the same name, and Apple Inc.'s executive management structure must now wade through the quagmire of intellectual property rights and trademark protection law to determine the course of action that preserves the company's duly earned domination of the market. The article presents the iPad's emergence as the standard bearer for tablet computing devices as a mixed bag of sorts for Apple Inc., noting that "this so-called 'genericization' can be both good and bad for companies like Apple, which must balance their desire for brand recognition with their disdain for brand deterioration" (Associated Press, 2012). At the time of the article's publication executives at Apple Inc. found themselves caught in the proverbial Catch-22 that all companies with vastly superior products inevitably encounter: the choice between expanding a brand name relentlessly in the pursuit of short-term profit, or the preservation of an established trademark to ensure steady profitability in the long-term.

The concept of genericide has several implications from an intellectual rights perspective, because there is established precedent for the nullification of a trademark when a court determines that a brand name has become so ubiquitous as to become the de facto name for all similar products in its market. The article cites a number of instances in which genericization was deemed to have occurred, revealing that "drug maker Bayer lost trademarks for the names 'aspirin' and 'heroin' this way in the 1920s ... B.F. Goodrich sued to protect its trademark of 'zipper' in the 1920s after the name joined the world of common nouns, and similar cases deemed 'escalator' generic in 1950, 'thermos' generic in 1963 and 'yo-yo' generic in 1965 (Associated Press, 2012). With the threat of inferior products being released and marketed as iPad's posing considerable risk to Apple Inc.'s carefully crafted intellectual property, it is important for company executives to remember that "trademark law was not traditionally intended to protect consumers ... (but) instead, like all unfair competition law, it sought to protect producers from illegitimate diversions of their trade by competitors" (McKenna, 2007). This is why even though the misinformed may mistakenly refer to an inferior mp3 music player as an iPod, Apple has worked tirelessly to protect its valuable trademark through the application of intellectual property rights provisions of the federal code. In the case of Apple Inc. And the now omnipresent iPad tablet computing device, the ultimate legal import of this article is that "unlike patent and copyright laws, trademark protection is intended to promote competition by facilitating a consumer's effort to distinguish among the goods of competing producers" (Coverdale, 1984).