When your own success becomes a danger
A development that is actually welcome can weaken your trademark: if its name becomes the general word for an entire product, loss of protection looms. This is called dilution.
What dilution means
Dilution is when a trademark loses its distinctiveness – because too many similar signs are tolerated or because the trademark name becomes the everyday generic term for the whole product category. Both erode the value and protection of your trademark.
A trademark identifies a company – not a product
As soon as customers use your trademark name for every comparable product (instead of only yours), it loses its function as an indication of origin. It is precisely this function that trademark law protects.
How a strong trademark dilutes
Strong word mark
Established, distinctive, clearly associated with your company.
Becomes an everyday word
Customers use the name for the whole product category.
Generic term
The name loses its function as an indication of origin.
Loss of protection
The trademark right can be weakened or lapse.
Well-known examples
Hardly anyone asks for a "paper tissue" – they say "Tempo". In everyday use the trademark name stands for the whole product category.
The lesson: Market leadership can become a trap when the name goes generic.
Language use / trademark scholarship
In some countries "Aspirin" became the general word for headache tablets – in the public domain in the US as early as 1921, still protected in Germany/Switzerland.
The lesson: Scope of protection can erode if nothing is done about it.
US judgment 1921 / trademark scholarship
"Post" is descriptive and was only registered through acquired distinctiveness. The BGH ("POST II", 2008) overturned the cancellation – but protection remained weak: competitors may use "Post" with additions.
The lesson: Purely descriptive terms are hard and weak to protect.
BGH "POST II", I ZB 48/07, 2008
How to counter it
Consistency helps against dilution: always use your trademark as a proper name (ideally with a generic word alongside, e.g. "the Marken-Kanzlei monitoring"), act against confusingly similar filings and document your defence. Ongoing monitoring is the basis for this – because only what you notice early can also be consistently defended.
Defending starts with noticing
We report confusingly similar filings to you automatically – the basis of any consistent defence.
This article is for information and does not constitute legal advice.