Network World reports that after a lengthy legal battle, Trek 2000 International successfully obtained trademark protection for its THUMBDRIVE trademark from the United States Patent and Trademark Office recently. The US Trial and Appeal Board ruled that THUMBDRIVE is not a generic term.

This is bad news for several publications PCWorld, CNET, PCMag.com just to name a few. These and others have been using (abusing) the THUMB DRIVE trademark recently. They will now have to switch to using the generic term USB flash drive, or risk a legal battle.

Under US Trademark Law, governed by The Lanham Act,  generic terms are not trademarkable. There are severaltrademarks that have become generic, and as a result, have lost their trademark value. Some well known ones are xerox, aspirin, and escalator.  In order to prevent a trademark from becoming generic, the mark needs to be strictly enforced. That means, money for a good legal team. Everyone needs to be out there, watching the market for ways that particular trademark is being used or misused by unauthorized parties.

Trek 2000 International obviously spent a bundle. Their law firm,  White and Case is a top tier law firm with multiple offices. They got a big win here.

The mark THUMB DRIVE was applied for in 2000 and was turned down for the mark being generic. But the Board was obviously convinced that the term is not generic because of the follwing issues:

1) other companies are marketing their own flash drives using different names, i.e. not THUMB DRIVE.”

demonstrating they were serious in their enforcement of the trademark, and 3) When remarking that the typical 2) Trek 2000 had successfully stopped some media outlets from using the THUMB DRIVE term. This helped them in person would consider THUMB DRIVE generic, the board reasoned that that is not the standard. In effect, they explained that the source of the “generic” rule is not the English language, but rather, commerce.

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