Zipper was once a trademark. So was aspirin. Band-Aid, Kleenex, Xerox, and Google still are, and want to be. But Google also wants to own the word Glass, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office isn’t wild about the idea.
Google already owns the trademark for Google Glass, the Wall Street Journal reports, but it wants exclusive use of the word “Glass,” rendered in the same typeface as Google Glass. The USPTO worries that too many technology products already use the word “glass,” and that the word alone is merely descriptive — a no-no for trademark use. (Kellogg’s can’t trademark Cereal, for instance.)
The dispute, as most legal struggles tend to do, continues.