Look again, it actually says Dempster

Wait until you learn about Thomas Crapper, who made major improvements to the modern toilet.

It’s kind of indicative that the courts have bent to corporations on not generciding names for nearly 60 years. How long have dumpsters been so ubiquitous that no one even knew it was a brand? Very Berenstain Bears situation.

I agree. If dump was a word before (I’ll have to check), then dumpster is a simple modification.

Not with that meaning but yes, poor terminology on the visual since it implies it was not.

Trademarks are context sensitive, and zoom was not used as a term for video calls before that. It is interesting that that’s the only one on the list that isn’t also a made up word

True, but it has gained additional meaning and uses. Before 2011, you could not “join a zoom”, for example.

And uber was before 2009.

The TV series was in 1972

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_(1972_TV_series)?wprov=sfla1

Not to mention many of these are literally still brand names and have not in fact been ruled generic.

Oh I see now they’ve made the generic ones dark grey.

If anything Jeep on this list is backwards. It was originally a generic term for that military style vehicle made by various manufacturers. Then it became its own thing as the Jeep brand. But then Jeep further broadened their offerings ( Cherokee, Patriot, compass, etc) and the Jeep became a wrangler. But when I say I drive a Jeep, everyone assumes specifically a wrangler.

When I read that my initial thought was more like a military jeep or any boxy army vehicle

My second thought was that one Mercedes jeep but that’s clearly not a jeep brand

Yeah, I thought the word Jeep originally came from the military initials GP - General Purpose vehicle. The generic term 4x4 (four by four) is pretty common in the UK.

It’s very common in Germany to call off-road vehicles jeeps

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about “zoom meetings” when the meetings are actually held on google meet, or webx.

I’ve used Zoom in previous companies to speak to clients, and have never heard anyone use it as a term for video calls. I have absolutely no idea where this has come from, but it’s definitely not true…

I work in tech. Everyone.

I’ve met a lot of people who do this through my work from home job

No one I know would use facetime… That suggests using a phone for a business meeting. Bad angles, shakey image… very unprofessional.

For a business meeting you need a computer which means we’re zooming, regardless of the platform

Let’s do a zoom meeting can conceivably be on Teams I guess

Yeah, it seems like facetime would be more at risk for becoming generic. If it weren’t for Apple, that is.

Who says “zoom” as a verb?

Zoomers.

Might be a thing with zoomers

I hear FaceTime used more generically than Zoom (for mobile video chat)

I’ve heard people say Google zoom call. 🤪

Sometimes my boss will use mention “zoom” when scheduling a virtual meeting between us and clients, but we choose which platform we use and most of us don’t use zoom. So its sorta being used like that.

I always hear people say “meets”, “FaceTime”, etc… Zoom is definitely the most popular but I wouldn’t consider a generic term.

Bo Burnham’s “Welcome To The Internet” already suggested “start a rumor / do a Zoom or / send a death threat to a boomer.”

That’s why when someone says “they have to protect their IP otherwise they lose it”, they’re full of shit. The bar for losing a trademark is essentially that no one can be reasonably expected to know it was a trademark.

Arguably it’s a bit dated but I don’t think it’s gone completely the way of the dinosaur.

Probably in the '90s, early 2000s. Usually it would be a teacher saying they needed to go make a Xerox/some xeroxes. I’m pretty sure some of those schools didn’t actually have a Xerox-brand machine. I think most people say going to make a copy now, and it doesn’t seem to be done nearly as often as it was 10 years ago.

Last time I heard it was in a dramatic re-enactment of a deposition where the witness did not know the word “photocopy” and the lawyer was not having it.

I sometimes call in to an office to use their facilities and Melanie on reception will almost invariably ask me if I’m there to do some “ex a rock sing” (xeroxing) and I say yes and then ask if the “ex a rock” machine is in the usual place. We’ve been laughing at this one joke for over twenty years. Perhaps we should get out more?

I mean the last time I heard it was in Bojack Horseman. They had an episode called “Xerox of a Xerox”

It’s the name for photocopy in India. Nobody would know what you mean if you say I need a photocopier.

Typical exchange in Texas:

Person A: Can I have a coke?

Person B: What kind?

Person A: Dr Pepper

As if Coca-Cola would ever allow that to happen. They’d send death squads against the court that even thought about it.

Do people really use coke generically? I’ve always thought coke to refer solely to coca-cola. Maybe it’s just a regional thing.

Using “coke” as a generic word for soft drinks is very regional in the US. In a large part of the country you would get a funny look if you referred to some other brand as a coke. The law office that made this is in Colorado, and it looks like they’re solidly in “pop” territory.

“Google it” means look it up on the Internet. My kids don’t use Chrome, they use Google (probably call it that because it’s the homepage of Chrome).

I’ve heard people say they’re going to uber home. They sometimes use Lyft.

And I’ve definitely heard people say they were on a zoom call even when it was Microsoft Teams or Google …what is the Google one called again? I don’t remember anymore because people will say Google zoom call!!

I use it exactly like that all the time.

nice try, google-lawyer.

You’ve never heard zoom used as a regular word to mean fast? The word itself is older than the program.

Petroleum jelly, hook and loop, pepper spray, and polystyrene.

The one that got me was zipper. What else do you call one?

Velcro brand doesn’t want anyone to call the invention Velcro to protect the trademark: https://youtu.be/rRi8LptvFZY

I hope the world loses realtors

What do you use for zipper, super hero, and trampoline?

year the brand name was first introduced.

It says so in the legend. Zoom has been a word for a long time but it now also means “participate in a (video) teleconference”, which is a new meaning directly linked to the zoom software released in 2011. When a word became generic is usually very hard to pinpoint exactly (except for zoom that was 2020)

For heroin: I don’t think there was heroin before the introduction of the heroin brand. Bayer literally invented the substance. (Wikipedia says it was invented 23 years earlier in Britain from morphine, but the inventer didn’t do anything with it so it was reinvented later). It was also not a drug you take to get high, it was an over the counter cough suppressant; no needle or spoon or lighter involved. Wild times for sure…

It’s from the German word “heroisch”, which is basically “heroic”. They used it being a homonym for “heroine” to use women heroes or Valkyrie in marketing for a bit, because it’ll save you from that nasty cough.

It didn’t really go by anything before, since it’s not something super easy to make, and so the first people to really make a lot of it was Bayer, and they named it heroin.

Before heroin people had morphine, and heroin had been made as “diamorphine”, but it just wasn’t really a thing.