US Court of Appeals clarifies standard for trade mark genericide and affirms that GOOGLE trade mark is not generic

Ekaratne, S. C. (2017) US Court of Appeals clarifies standard for trade mark genericide and affirms that GOOGLE trade mark is not generic. Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, 12 (9). pp. 730-731. ISSN 1747-1532 doi: 10.1093/jiplp/jpx125

Abstract/Summary

Elliott v Google, Inc, 856 F3d 1225 (9th Cir 2017) The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed that the GOOGLE trade mark is not generic because, although ‘google’ is used as a verb, the plaintiffs had not sufficiently established that ‘google’ is used as a term for search engines generally.