That Which We Call a Rose

A manufacturer's most jealously guarded possession is often not the combination to the safe but the name of his product. On the one hand, he desperately wants the public to get in the habit of asking for it by name; on the other, he shudders at the thought of that name becoming the name for anybody else's similar product. Kodak, B.V.D., and Coca-Cola have for generations bared their teeth in courtrooms to protect their names from slipping into the generic limbo where mimeograph and nylon now languish in lower-case ignominy.

Last week another fighter of the good fight gave up, quietly entered into the public domain. Since 1958, the American Thermos Products Co. of Norwich, Conn., had been contesting the use of the word "thermos" by a competitor, Aladdin Industries Inc., of Nashville, Tenn. Ruling that American Thermos no longer held exclusive rights to the name of the jug no picnic can do without, the judge of the U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn., pointed out that "thermos" had become generic largely through the efforts of the manufacturer himself over a period of many years.

Among the U.S. products still standing watch over their good names, still demanding Upper-Case billing in news stories, novels and shopping columns: Erector Set, Band-Aid, Dixie cup, JellO, Jeep, Laundromat, Kleenex. Deepfreeze, Levi's (blue jeans). Dry Ice, Simoniz, Spray Net and Zipper.

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