Talk:Thread-locking fluid

Loctite
The following discussion was started on my talk page. Wizard191 (talk) 18:34, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Why did you restore the reference to Loctite as a "genericized trademark"? This is inaccurate and unfair to the company. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.180.179.135 (talk) 03:10, 23 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Because everyone uses the term "loctite" in the plate of "thread locker". Wizard191 (talk) 17:08, 23 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Wizard - "Genericized" is a legal determination, and no court has made such a determination for Loctite. As Wikipedia's own entry for "Genericized Trademarks" reads, "Other trademarks have come close to genericization, but have been rescued by aggressive corrective campaigns. Such is the case with Xerox  for photocopiers, Plexiglass  for shatter-resistant polymer glass, Kleenex  for facial tissues, and others."


 * Loctite feels very strongly that this is unfair and would like the genericized reference removed. Is there a way we can settle this dispute through a mediation or third party, as recommended on the 'resolving disputes' page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.180.179.135 (talk) 18:30, 1 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure, the next step would be WP:THIRD. Wizard191 (talk) 18:35, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Here in response to 3O request, I see two points which might have bearing here. First is that trademarks enjoy broad legal protection and "genericizing" (a word that choked my spellchecker half to death) is indeed a court action with legal consequences, not just a figure of speech, although the general public may sometimes use it that way. Second is that the Loctite brand presents a fairly extensive array of products, not just a single item, so the phrase doesn't really seem accurate. In short, the parenthetical explanation of Loctite in the intro seems unnecessary and possibly confusing, so I'd suggest removing it. That's just my two cents, and it's probably worth less than a penny after allowing for inflation. Good luck, Doc  Tropics  19:54, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the input, I have removed it as such. Wizard191 (talk) 20:44, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I think this was a satisfactory outcome. I would just like to climb up onto a soap box long enough to say that companies should seriously consider promoting a generic name for any product that they make (particularly if no generic name yet exists), if they don't want their brand name becoming genericized in natural language use (which legal action just chases like a horse already out of the barn). Brands like Slinky, Loctite, and Jell-O all have products for which generic names exist but are not the names that the average user's mind reaches for first. Probably in some cases the companies tacitly encouraged this to happen (good for sales), but they were playing with fire, because it creates a situation where the name has in fact been genericized (which any linguist would tell you is a natural language evolutionary event, not a decision made by deciders, although this is one of the few contexts in language where linguistic prescription can be enforced by threat of legal and financial penalty), "but we're not allowed to say that truth out loud, because someone might sue us." It's a dishonest way of life. In fairness to the people that named and marketed those products many decades ago, they didn't realize at the time that they were doing anything ill-advised. It's a lesson that humans simply hadn't learned yet. But in hindsight, there never should have been a Slinky package that didn't say "SLINKY brand lazy spring", with the latter in non-tiny letters, instead of just "SLINKY", but I bet there were plenty of such packages years ago, with either tiny-print generic name or no generic name at all. The genericized trademark article points out that the pharmaceutical industry provides the model that other industries should follow, where the trade name and the generic name coexist from the start, and each is used in a way that maintains clarity about which it is. — ¾-10 23:58, 4 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you to everyone involved for your opinions and response. It is much appreciated. 20:53, 7 December 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.180.179.135 (talk)


 * I think this is hilarious. I just got here by following a link in an IRC thread that went like this:  alice: "bob, you need some loctite"  bob: "huh?"  claire: "stuff to make threads not come loose"  alice: .  My point being that apparently in my speech-community, "loctite" is a generic name for thread-locking fluid.  All that said, I'm impressed by the wisdom and prudence of 70.180.179.135 in his/her strategy for resolving this.  Unusually classy behaviour from someone representing a corporation. jholman (talk) 21:03, 22 December 2010 (UTC)