The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Glen Fisher:

Mark DF asked (in #292) for advice on using "dumpster" as a generic.

I don't really see that in conjunction with their enforcement as opposed to the way Xerox defends their mark

Says one web site, "According to enteract.com, 'lawyers in charge of protecting the Dumpster trademark are infamous in media circles for sending friendly letters of admonishment year after year to reporters and editors whenever news items erroneously refer to a large metal trash receptacle as a Dumpster instead of a dumpster unless it really is a Dumpster.'" That sounds like they're serious about protecting it.

It's also hard to tell when a mark is considered diluted

I think that's decided by the courts. Or by the trademark owner. Clearly, Dumpster doesn't consider it "diluted", and no one's gotten a court to rule otherwise that I can discover. (Trademark owners can simply abandon a mark. Westinghouse did that with "laundromat".)

is it in fact illegal not to capitalize and, if so, what are the possible ramifications?

I suspect that, strictly, writing "dumpster" without acknowledging it as a trademark probably is indeed illegal, since you're using the mark for products not made by the Dumpster company. Ramifications: their lawyers send you and your publisher a nastygram, followed possibly by other actions if the nastygram doesn't get the desired effect.

is dumpster diluted?

As I said, I couldn't find a clear statement that it had been declared as such. However, that may be only because no one's actually gone to the trouble and expense of challenging it in court.

do you all think I'm being stubborn for no good reason?

Depends. What counts as a "good reason"? So far, all you've said is "I think using a capital looks funny." You've provided no background or context. How you're using it may make all the difference. For example, if it appears in dialog, you could argue that real people don't distinguish between Dumpster-brand dumpsters and other brands, so your characters shouldn't either.

Taking another tack, you might ask your publisher whether they also insist on proper trademark indications for bake-off, bubble wrap, baggies, fig newtons, ping-pong, pablum, seeing-eye dog, tabasco, velcro, welcome wagon, and ziploc, all of which the Patent Office considers active trademarks (all from a list of "at risk" trademarks I found). Is the policy one of protecting all trademarks, or only the ones they recognize to be trademarks?




Nancy C asked (at #322),

The question now is, what is teleporation?

Punching holes in something from a distance.

Mitch Wagner wrote:
There is something about these very old movies -- those aren't costumes those people are wearing, it's their actual clothes. I'm convinced that there is a naturalness to people wearing their own natural style of clothes that not even the best actor can reproduce.

You're not the only one to notice this. Some time back, my local SCA group was helping out at a community college "Renaissance Night". As I was going from somewhere to somewhere else--in SCA garb, of course--I got stopped and asked whether I was from the SCA. When I said yes, the response was essentially, "I knew it!" What gave it away? It seems that the person who asked had noticed that the SCA people were treating the period attire as clothing, as nothing more than what they'd happened to pull out of the closet that evening, while everyone else treated it as costume, something strange and uncomfortable, and the difference was clearly visible.

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