At 2:34 PM -0700 4/19/99, Nathan J. Williams wrote:
>general. So while I respect the company's desire to keep control of
>their trademarks, it seems like they've reached the level of Kleenex,
>Coke, or Xerox in the PDA world.
I can think of a couple of flaws with that:
1) Coke and Xerox very aggressively defend their brands. That is, you
won't get Pepsi, RC, or generic cola if you ask for a Coke, and you won't
get generic copier paper if you ask for Xerox paper. ...and you wouldn't
want your secretary to bring back a Cassiopia if sent them out to get a
Palm V.
2) Palm Computing, Inc. had to 'cease and desist' using the names Pilot and
PalmPilot because of other companies agressively defending *their* brands.
Of course, if "pilot" (lowercase) catches on as the generic noun for
connected organizer/PDA, (assuming the pen company doesn't put a stop to
that) it changes the whole ballgame. Of course, you'd still have to talk
about the "Palm III pilot" or "Palm V pilot" or "Palm brand pilots" when
you wanted to specifically call out the dominant player in the market... :)
--Bob
