In a September 10, 2018Â post on Uber’s website, Uber’s CEO is quoted saying “Very few brands become verbs; for Uber to have achieved this shows how we’ve captured imaginations and become an important part of our customers’ lives….”
Many companies go out of their way to discourage the use of their trademark as a verb or a noun. For example, the owners of the VELCRO brand produced a humorous music video instructing the public not to use VELCRO as a noun or verb. Why?
They did this to prevent the loss of trademark rights in the VELCRO trademark due to what is called genericide. Genericide occurs when the public appropriates a trademark and uses it as a generic name for a type of good or service regardless of the source. If this happens, as it did for ASPIRIN, the trademark owner can loose its rights in the mark. Therefore, usually companies avoid, and instruct others to avoid, using their trademarks as nouns or verbs.
However, in a recent case where the plaintiff unsuccessfully attacked Google’s trademark as generic, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said that verb use of a trademark alone does not automatically constitute a generic use. Instead, to know if the public uses the mark as a generic name of a type of good or service, we need some information about what the consumer is thinking when they use the mark as a verb.
Here, does the consumer mean the Uber ride service or any ride service when using Uber as a verb? The latter case is where the problem lies for trademark owners.
Therefore, the acknowledgement by Uber’s CEO that Uber is a verb is not the end all regarding Uber’s trademark rights. Yet, it is something that a challenger could point to in attempting to attack the validity of Uber’s trademark.