Americans tend to use brand names instead of the words for things.. Xerox, Velcro etc...
We call it klittenband.. tangle band. Or tangle strip
Don't Say Velcro (2017)
21–30 of 175 posts
Re: Don't Say Velcro (2017)
#22Velcro!
Re: Don't Say Velcro (2017)
#23I’m assuming this is meant to be a joke.
No I think this is a good faith effort to protect their trademark
It won’t work, but legally if they don’t make an effort then they lose it by default.
Re: Don't Say Velcro (2017)
#24Re: Don't Say Velcro (2017)
#25Oh goodness, will this hasten the velcropolipse?
I fear that whilst velcroing items I will forget the need to not mention velcro as in to velcro or the thing velcro itself and the words the VELCRO™ lawyers said about not saying velcro will slip from my mind like poorly velcroed shoes.
Does anyone else think their use of velcro in casual conversation will be affected? Has anyone tried to use velcro and suffered any fall out? I might have to Google it.
Re: Don't Say Velcro (2017)
#26Reminds me of the dark ages, when Xerox was so dominant in the copier market that people used their brand as a noun and a verb. They were threatened with loss of their trademark, because it had become so generic. So they had a massive publicity campaign, asking people to say "copy" instead of "xerox". Is this a uniquely US thing? In the UK, people always say "hoover" instead of "vacuum".
> Is this a uniquely US thing? No, in Russia people have been xerring documents since photocopiers appeared there.
"Xerring"? Not "xeroxing"?
Re: Don't Say Velcro (2017)
#27v e l c r o (r)
Re: Don't Say Velcro (2017)
#28Related, Google wrote a blog post[1] on a similar topic in 2006. As far as I know they've successfully avoided genericide and a 2017 lawsuit[2] ended with a ruling in their favor.
Also, unsurprisingly, Adobe has a whole section in their trademarks page about photoshopping[3]:
> Correct: The image was enhanced with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software.
> Incorrect: The image was photoshopped.
[1]: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/do-you-google.html
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_litigation#Genericide_o...
[3]: https://www.adobe.com/legal/permissions/trademarks.html
Re: Don't Say Velcro (2017)
#29Cute attempt, but Velcro/velcro has already been genericised for decades at this point. Nobody's going to move (back?) to "hook-and-loop," especially when the alternative rolls off the tongue a lot better.
That may not matter to Velcro (TM). As long as they're publicly making attempts to defend their trademark, perhaps that is enough for them to keep legal rights to it.
It doesn't read like an honest attempt, it reads like a tongue-in-cheek parody of one.
Turns out judges used to be lawyers and are pretty good at reading between the lines, too.
Re: Don't Say Velcro (2017)
#30> Us lawyers have to protect our people. Using the VELCRO® trademark properly allows us to protect the integrity of the VELCRO® Brand and our trademark rights, and protect consumers from purchasing products incorrectly identified as VELCRO® Brand products. It’s, you know, the right thing to do.
One of my least favourite thing is when massive corporations use this kind of cutesy language. To me, it brings to mind the wolf from Little Red Riding hood wearing her grandmother's clothes.
If the sentence was honest, it'd be something more like:
> Us lawyers are paid money to facilitate the VELCRO megacorp to make even more money. If you threaten the megacorp by misusing our trademark, we will sue you into the ground, no matter who you are, and regardless of whether it's the "right thing" or not.