Computational Linguistics Commons^™

Generic Ab Initio, James A. Heilpern, Earl Kjar Brown, William G. Eggington, Zachary D. Smith

Buffalo Law Review

From comic conventions to disbanded dioceses, courts continue to struggle with a unique but puzzling question of trademark law. Federal law protects certain terms that refer to a product or service from a specific producer instead of to a product generally. Terms that refer to products are considered generic and cannot receive protection. Courts have also held that a term that was generic at the time the party adopted the mark cannot receive protection, even if the public later views it as being specific to a particular producer. But, many marks were adopted decades or centuries ago. As a result, …