Sunday, September 14, 2025
Don't Say Velcro
The lawyers at VELCRO® Brand would prefer you not to use their company's name. What? Not say the brand name? I think the point they are getting to is that you shouldn't use their name when referring to the same product made by companies other than VELCRO®, although they aren't that clear about it. The actual product should be referred to as "hook and loop." The company wants to protect their trademark even though they lost the patent 40 years ago.
The singing lawyers make for a funny video, but as for using the brand names as a generic term, that genie left the bottle long ago. Just ask Crock-Pot®, Xerox®, Thermos®, or any of the other brands that became nouns. People are not going to say "hook and loop," but thanks to this video, they may be more aware of the brand, and that's the real point. (via Metafilter)
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4 comments:
*hook and loop
Bless their hearts... I think that's a battle they are not going to win.
I think I'm one of the 160 people in the world who really, really enjoyed the Star Trek: Enterprise teevee show. One of my favorite episodes was /Carbon Creek/, where T'Pol's grandmother is stranded on late-1950s Earth with her two Vulcan space survey companions, in a coal mine town in Pennsylvania. She befriends a boy growing up in a pool-table bar. The boy wants to go to college for science but can't pay for it. The last thing, before she's rescued back to space, she rips out some velcro from her crashed ship and demonstrates it to a patent lawyer for a wad of cash to anonymously put in the boy's tip jar.
Oh please tell me there are more than 160 of us.
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