Demaestro - 5:19 pm on Aug 14, 2006 (gmt 0)

The lawyers are just doing what they have to do. It's that simple.

I disagree 100%.... Why do they have to do this? Using Google's name as a verb does NOTHING to harm or put their trademark in jeopordy... nothing.

The fact that a bunch of really over paid people got together and justified this action just says to me that they have people outsmarting themselves over at G. If they have worked it out in their minds that this course of action is required, then they really need to go give their heads a shake, come out of their little closed office and enter the real world. The letters were not needed nor are they legally binding, nor can Google do anything if news people ignore their pleas to cease using the term.

Have Johnson and Joshnson lawyers have been missing the boat all this time?

How many people have tried to steal the Band-Aid name over the term.... Band-Aid solution? NONE!

How many tradmarks has Xerox lost over the terms like "I Xeroxed it" or "Can you Xerox me a copy of that"....Again the answer is Zero. The only people the Xerox term hurts is..... Cannon.... because even if the machine in someone's office is a Cannon the term Zerox probably still gets used.

It doesn't upset you that in this rediculously letigious society that we are in right now that something this trival and this stupid can become an issue? That someone can get paid 100s of $$ an hour to send out these letters that do nothing. These lawyers are just trying justify their existance at Google by coming up with something to do.

Google pays these guys money and this is what they do with their time? .... Sad, really really sad. There are tons of examples given about other brand name products being used in the main stream language. Not 1 of them resulting in a case where the tradmarked name was put into jeopordy, not one.... It is silly waste of time and money.

All this action by them says to me is they have too much time on their hands. Time to cut the legal department fat IMO.

Making Google a main stream term is something they want to happen. This type of word of mouth is an advertisers dream. Free PR.... too bad they have to go and make themselves look the fool instead of basking in the free PR glory.

[edited by: Demaestro at 5:20 pm (utc) on Aug. 14, 2006]