It doesn't matter what the actual status of the word in common usage is, they just have to show they are attempting to protect the trademark so that they can litigate to protect it in specific instances.<p>Adobe thoroughly enjoys the fact that 'photoshop' is synonymous with image editing. They just have to pretend otherwise. See also band-aid, aspirin, Hoover, Kleenex. (iOS capitalized the last two but not the first two)
Here is Google's version of Google is not a verb: <a href="https://www.google.com/permissions/trademark/rules.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/permissions/trademark/rules.html</a>
So your brand got the rare honour of being used in many languages of the world as a verb, burning the brand to peoples heads and then, instead of being damn proud, you publish such a marketing nonsense and slam it in peoples faces? Are you kidding me?? Really, your marketing department thinks this is wrong? Challenge accepted. Let me GIMP your brand out of my mental image.
Here's an interesting case from the open-source world.<p>Apache holds the "Apache Maven" trademark. Apache Maven is a build management/automation tool which uses a lot of "plugins".<p>The peculiar part is that Apache won't let you name your plugin "maven-<foobar>-plugin" whereas "<foobar>-maven-plugin" is allowed. The wording is:<p>"Calling it maven-<yourplugin>-plugin (note "Maven" is at the beginning of the plugin name) is strongly discouraged since it's a reserved naming pattern for official Apache Maven plugins maintained by the Apache Maven team with groupId org.apache.maven.plugins. Using this naming pattern is an infringement of the Apache Maven Trademark."<p><a href="https://maven.apache.org/guides/plugin/guide-java-plugin-development.html" rel="nofollow">https://maven.apache.org/guides/plugin/guide-java-plugin-dev...</a><p>To be clear, we're talking about technical naming here, similar to how you'd name a package or an executable file. These names are actually composite, the full plugin name consists of a "groupId" like "com.acme.foo" and "artifactId" like "<foobar>-maven-plugin". For non-"org.apache.maven.plugins" plugins groupdId is mandatory, so "com.acme.foo:maven-foobar-plugin" makes it pretty clear that it's not an Apache development.<p>I'm a plugin developer who had the bad luck naming my plugin "maven-<foobar>-plugin" before this convention was established. There's an established user base, a lot of documentation, StackOverflow tags etc. There exists also an alternative plugin named "<foobar>-maven-plugin".<p>But still once in a while I get contacted by someone (from Apache or totally unrelated) who educates me on how the name of my plugin infringes on the Apache Maven Trademark.<p>I strongly disagree with this and my position was ever since that if Apache wants to enforce this trademark, they are totally welcome to send me a "Cease and Desist" letter. I'll print it out, hang it on the wall and then shut down the project.
I'm mostly disturbed by the sentence "Since Photoshop is a trademark, you should always use it as an adjective only to describe the Adobe products associated with the Photoshop brand.", as Photoshop is clearly a noun.
I remember reading on Kelloggs box: If it doesn't say Kelloggs on the box, it's not Kelloggs in the box.<p>Where I live many people call Kelloggs any cereal boxes. I though they should have been proud that their every such product is called by their name.<p>Pampers also comes to my mind - almost no one calls them diapers - just pampers be it from any manufacturer.
Columbia Journalism Review used to have full-page advertisements from Xerox that read, "You can't Xerox a Xerox on a Xerox. But you can make a copy on a Xerox-brand copier."<p>It was effective, in that I remember the ad many years later. But it didn't do much to change the way people use language.
I don't understand how this is a bad thing, I mean to Google is a verb, to Photoshop ® is to edit photos, it means that their product is the absolute best in its category so much so that it became a verb. Most startup folks would kill it to have their product be a synonym with a verb.
Yes it is. And so is google, and table.<p><a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY</a>
It reminds me of "Legos".<p>It is a shibboleth, and the "Lego community" is incredibly serious about it, to the point of incivility, but who cares?
NYT: Photoshopped or Not? A Tool to Tell<p>Wikipedia: ... the word "photoshop" has become a verb as in "to Photoshop an image," ...