Supreme Court Asked To Nullify the Google Trademark (arstechnica.com)

Is the term "google" too generic and therefore unworthy of its trademark protection? That's the question before the US Supreme Court. From a report: What's before the Supreme Court is a trademark lawsuit that Google already defeated in a lower court. The lawsuit claims that Google should no longer be trademarked because the word "google" is synonymous to the public with the term "search the Internet." "There is no single word other than google that conveys the action of searching the Internet using any search engine," according to the petition to the Supreme Court. It's perhaps one of the most consequential trademark case before the justices since they ruled in June that offensive trademarks must be allowed. The Google trademark dispute dates to 2012 when a man named Chris Gillespie registered 763 domain names that combined "google" with other words and phrase, including "googledonaldtrump.com."

Comments

bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

to google means to search on google.
I don't know what kind of morons this guy talks to, but I never hear people say google when they mean bing, or yahoo or whatever.
The verb for those is "search".

Re:bullshit

[gstewart]

It is bullshit, but the reason is because the verb "google" was derived from the trademarked search engine called Google that was the most popular (and functional) of all search engines back in the early 2000's.

And, I know far too many people who use the blanket verb "google" regardless of the engine they use to do it with.

Re:bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need to get out more often. Substantial numbers of people literally don't know the difference, despite the bigass logo.

I'm not arguing that the term "google" has become generic but I am absolutely arguing that people don't ever really "mean bing", they mean search, and don't realize they aren't using google. I've even heard it called "Microsoft google", and they were referring to neither bing nor google.

Re:bullshit

[vux984]

Indeed. I have never heard anyone say "Google it with Bing" except as a joke.

Practically nobody says "can you pass me a kleenex from that box of puffs facial tissues" unless they are making a joke too. They just say 'pass me a kleenex'. But they'll point at the puffs box while asking without awareness or irony.

Likewise people do say 'just google X' all the time as a generic synonym for "search for it on the internet". And they'll open their browser and use the default search without any real awareness that its actually yahoo or bing.

I don't know that its sufficiently generic for loss of trademark. But lets not kid ourselves here, I will say 'google something' yet I use duckduckgo on all the systems at home. The word 'search' doesn't automatically mean 'on the internet' ... if i say 'can you search for my drill' it's not immediately obvious that I want an internet search (e.g. for its specs / support / accessories / current price ), as opposed to finding my actual drill in the garage. And if I say 'google my drill' it means find a product page for my drill on the internet. And I don't care, or even intend for anyone to actually use google to do it.

Pretty sure we know the answer.

[UnknowingFool]

Like many questions asked on slashdot, the answer should be "No". See Kleenex(TM), Xerox(TM), Band-Aid(TM), etc.