Legal Commentary

I'm reading Larry Lessig's new book Remix. He discusses the differences between commercial economies and sharing economies. He explains that friends do favors for one another in a sharing economy, and corporations and customers use cash as the medium of exchange in a commercial economy. He points out that if a friend missed lunch with you, it would be very odd for that friend to offer $50 to make it up to you. Okay, I buy that. But then he says this:

[I]t would be very odd if ... McDonald's asked you to "help out" by promising to buy hamburgers at least once a month .... "helping out" is not just rare in a commercial economy. It is downright weird.

Well, then, what are we to make of this ad in the current issue of the ABA Journal:

It reads:

If a trademark is misused it could come undone. If you didn't know zipper was a trademark, don't worry, it's not. But it used to be. It was lost because people misused the name. And the same could happen to ours, Xerox. Please help us ensure it doesn't. Use Xerox only as an adjective to identify out products and services, such as Xerox copiers, not a verb, "to Xerox," or a noun, "Xeroxes." Something in mind that will help us keep it together.

Dude, I'm sorry, but what the #@!& do I care if Xerox loses its trademark registration to "xerox"? Wow. I've got other stuff to care about. Like the lives of individual mosquitoes.

I only wish Lessig were right.

Now before you send me e-mail or respond to this post explaining to me why companies with borderline generic (or completely generic) trademarks engage in educative advertising campaigns, please stop. I know. (See Du Pont v. Yoshida, 393 F. Supp. 502, 527-28 (E.D.N.Y. 1975) (dubiously holding that "Teflon" was saved from genericide, in part, by Du Pont's diligent educational campaign).) Look, it is one thing to tell people that this way or that way is the right way or wrong way to use a word. But it is quite another thing to attempt to appeal to people's sense of right and wrong and ask them to altruistically "please help" a publicly traded corporation in its self-serving pursuit. 

Honestly, speaking, it's unbelievable. What a bunch of weasels. I'm going to go downstairs and xerox something on the Canon photocopier right now just to do it.