VELCRO® Brand
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2019–2025
2:15 · 1.3M views · Sep 25, 2017
Velcro Brand's legal team makes a short, humorous ad asking people not to use "velcro" as a noun or verb and to say hook and loop instead. It is a tongue-in-cheek lesson in defending a trademark against genericization.
HN cites it as the go-to example of a company defending its trademark, and many also find it funny.
11 comments from Hacker News
If you've never seen the video ad that went along with this campaign, it's hilarious and worth watching, as is the follow up. I love the good humor about the whole thing. And it has made their campaign stick in ways that other similar campaigns have not. this video [LINK]
That is a very cute page. I like their attitude. And the video at the top of the page is absolutely wonderful. It's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. Watch it with good headphones or speakers and the sound up. Direct link: this video
Here is Velcro's lawyers telling you to call those other brands 'hook and loop' in a surprisingly straightforward, honest and amusing way. this video
After reading the post about Super Bowl [0] I remembered the Velcro advertisement [1] and wondered what else are genericized trademarks. I think everyone is aware that Velcro, Kleenex, post-it are trademarks, even though they are used for off-brand products colloquially. In Germany people also use Tempo, Tesa, Edding and so on, but most are aware that these are brand names. But I was surprised to find out that names like escalator, cellophane, flip phone, even dry ice, trampoline, dumpster were once brand names! [0] [LINK] [1] this video Past submissions: List of Generic Trademarks - [LINK] - Nov 2021 (0 comments) List of Generic and Genericized Trademarks - [LINK] - Feb 2021 (3 comments) List of generic and genericized trademarks - [LINK] - Sep 2017 (0 comments) Brand Names Which Become Generic Names [Wikipedia] - [LINK] - Jan 2014 (0 comments)
JavaScript can refer to many different similar languages, the runtimes, the standard library, etc. People using JavaScript without getting permission are potentially infringing on Oracle's trademark. Many companies with trademarks tenaciously defend the trademark to protect it from being revoked. This doesn't appear to be the case with JavaScript. After usage becomes widespread, a company risks losing their trademark because they did not actively enforce the use of the trademark. This video explains it from Velcro's perspective this video