IP Democracy: Good Luck to Google in Stamping Out Generic Use

Google’s meteoric success and subsequent infiltration of the public consciousness has a downside - the giant search engine has become so ingrained into daily life that the company’s name, its trademark, is almost generic. The popular usage of the name and noun “Google” is a good thing, according to Google’s attorneys, but don’t go using the verb “to google.”

The Mountain View giant has sent out legal notices to media organizations warning that “google” as a verb is verboten. Here’s what a spokesman had to say:

“We think it’s important to make the distinction between using the word Google to describe using Google to search the internet, and using the word Google to describe searching the internet. It has some serious trademark issues.”

Google’s attorneys have distributed examples of what’s permitted and what’s not permitted.

“Appropriate: I ran a Google search to check out that guy from the party. Inappropriate: I googled that hottie.”

Much mockery has ensued and some have even questioned whether Google has gone all corporate all of a sudden. But, these letters have apparently been going out for years, and my guess is that Google is merely trying to preserve its trademark rights in the event some serious infringement occurs down the road (imagine Yahoo! taking out an ad that uses “to google” in a generic way).

After all, if Google doesn’t periodically object to the generic use of its name, a future infringer might have a good argument that Google never took steps to protect its trademark. As far as actually stopping people — including writers and journalists — from using “google” in a generic way, we see how well that’s worked for Band-Aid, Xerox and Kleenex. Go ahead, google these terms and you’ll see.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on August 15, 2006 9:43 AM to IP Democracy