When a trademark name ends up in the dictionary

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When the company Migueláñez bought one of Pastor and Canals' brands in 2015, it had to issue a press release. Not only did it announce the purchase, but it also made one point clear. From then on, they were the only ones who could talk about "gominolas." The competition would have to use other terms when presenting their products, such as candy or sweets, but not gominola. The reason: gominola is actually a registered trademark. "Although many people talk about Gominolas when referring to candies, sweets or sweets, the truth is that it is a brand," explained the company's general manager, Mario Migueláñez, explaining that the purchase would allow them to use a very well-known term.

Gominola can be written with a lowercase letter because it is already in the dictionary. The RAE already includes it in the dictionary, making it clear that it comes from a registered trademark. A few years ago, although it was already present in some popular dictionaries of the language, such as Vox's, it was not in the Royal Spanish Academy's dictionary. The term has become more popular especially in recent decades, as shown by seeing what happens with the word in Ngram, the tool that analyzes the historical collection of Google books, settling among the usual ones. In fact, it is possible that for many people discovering that gominola is actually a registered trademark will be a surprise.

Evolution of the presence of the word gominola in books Ngram Viewer
The case of jelly beans may be one of the most surprising, but it is not the only one. Kleenex has become clinex, which the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts already mentions , and the general term for "the meaning of disposable paper handkerchief." The same occurs with lycra , infographic , table football , mercromina , neoprene , photo booth , tape , polo , velcro , band-aid or plasticine .

When they were born, they were just the name of a brand, but their popularity in their market (of which many were the ones who introduced and created them) made them become everything. The product, whoever makes it, is now always called that, at least in colloquial language.

Sometimes, the brand identity ends up being introduced all india whatsapp number list into popular culture. Just think of how, when summer approaches, people talk about getting rid of love handles... which is nothing more than a popular cultural appropriation of Michelin, the tyre company (and which, one might venture, became the reference image for the so-called "floats" thanks to its Michelin man - real name Bibendum ) .

For companies involved in these situations, the phenomenon is complicated. On the one hand, it shows that they are very popular and well-known. On the other, they face the risk of being diluted in the midst of popular culture. "It is not uncommon for companies that manufacture the products in question to protest when they see their brand name in the dictionary become a word of general use," explained the expert Pedro Álvarez de Miranda in the magazine of the Centro Virtual Cervantes, analyzing how dictionaries respond to this situation (basically, they include the mention that the word comes from a registered trademark).

How to stay relevant after entering the dictionary
First of all, no matter how much consumers talk about buying tissues or using them to clean whatever, only the company that owns the term can use it. "Although these words are used as generic terms to define a product, they are trademarks, and only their owners have the right to use them," Alberto Rabadán, director of trademarks at Pons Patentes y Marcas, reminded Expansión . The legal departments of companies have to be attentive to the use of the term and its applications, to avoid it being used in a regular way to talk about their competitors outside of colloquial registers.

One example was netbooks, the small minicomputers that came out before tablets and became a short-lived boom. The term had its moment of glory in the technology press... which started receiving cease and desist notices from a company that had the term as a trademark for its products. If you talked about netbooks you could only talk about their products. For everyone else you had to use other terms. Of course, this started a legal battle by other competitors but the decline of the market for these small portable computers meant that the use or not of the word was no longer relevant.