Taco Tuesday, Dumpster, Super Hero: How Brands Lose Their Words

A U.S. trademark board canceled Marvel and DC's four "Super Hero" registrations in September 2024 because the companies failed to answer a cancellation petition — and the loss is a working lesson in how brand names die. The process is called genericide: when the public adopts a trademark as the common name for an entire product category, the mark can lose its legal protection. Communications teams, not only lawyers, decide whether that happens.

The history runs deep. Frederick Walton coined "linoleum" in the 1860s for a floor covering, and in 1878 a court rejected his claim to exclusive use after the product's patent expired. Linoleum is often described as the first product name to become a generic term.

How does a brand become a common noun?

Popularity is the risk. Kleenex and Band-Aid are trademarks that many people use generically for "tissue" and "adhesive bandage," and both brands push back against that usage in their communications.

The pattern repeats across the last century:

• Laundromat. Westinghouse registered the term in the U.S. in the 1940s for automatic washing machines, then in the 1950s for coin laundries. The registration has expired, though "coin laundry" remains a common generic term.
• Videotape. Ampex Corporation, an early maker of audio and video tape recorders, originally trademarked the term, which now names the recording medium itself.
• Super glue. Loctite Corporation sought to register the term, but a court found it already in generic use by early 1974. In 1981, a federal court canceled Loctite's registration. Pacer Technology still holds a trademark for "The Original Super Glue."
• Dumpster. A portmanteau of "dump" and Dempster, the company whose Dempster Dumpmaster pioneered the front-loading garbage truck. The trademark was registered in 1963 and canceled in the U.S. in 2015 after a required maintenance filing was missed.
• Taco Tuesday. Gregory's Restaurant and Bar held a New Jersey registration; Taco John's held registrations covering the other 49 states. In 2023, Taco John's relinquished its registration after Taco Bell petitioned to cancel it. Gregory's followed later that year after Taco Bell challenged it as well.

The Super Hero case shows how quickly inattention costs a mark. After London-based comic artist S.J. Richold's company, Superbabies Ltd., petitioned to cancel the marks, the board ruled for Superbabies. Superbabies' attorney said the ruling put "SUPER HEROES" in the public domain, making the term available to all storytellers.

What does this change for communications teams?

Everything procedural. The International Trademark Association developed guidance for keeping a trademark distinct, and every recommendation is enforceable by a comms function rather than a legal department:

• Set the rules early. Write an internal guide while the brand is still in development, and make it available to everyone who creates, approves and publishes brand materials.
• Pair the brand with a generic noun. Choose the plain product term before launch and use the trademark as an adjective followed by that noun. If the category term is obscure, find or create a clearer one.
• Give people usable correction language. Prepare a short, friendly, firm explanation of correct usage that teams can send to consumers, licensees and partners who use the mark generically.
• Put the rules into working documents. Include trademark guidance in brand manuals and in agreements with agencies, licensees, distributors and dealers. Train employees and partners.
• Check the company's own copy. Use the trademark consistently in advertising, social posts, product descriptions and internal materials. INTA also advises reviewing promotional concepts for language or visuals that blur the line between brand and category.
• Monitor public and commercial use. Track coverage, online references and new trademark filings for similar goods. INTA recommends using an experienced search vendor.
• Keep the receipts. Save unsolicited public and press mentions, which can establish how audiences have historically used the brand.

Which brands still hold the line?

Some marks survive despite everyday generic use. Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes set out to make three-dimensional plastic wallpaper and instead created packing material; Sealed Air introduced the Bubble Wrap brand in 1960 and continues to market BUBBLE WRAP® as a specific brand. Gerber Childrenswear still owns "Onesies" for infant bodysuits and objects to generic use, even as the plural mark produced the everyday singular "onesie" for all manner of jumpsuits.

Even language itself carries the scars of genericide. The verb "escalate" is a back-formation from "escalator," a term Charles D. Seeberger trademarked after Jesse Reno patented his "Endless Conveyor or Elevator" in 1892. A brand name changed how the world describes everything from prices to geopolitical tensions. For practitioners, the lesson is direct: the words a company publishes about its own brand today become the evidence — or the liability — in the trademark disputes of tomorrow.

By Priya Raman