dant@mrloog.WR.TEK.COM (Dan Tilque) (01/04/90)
mustard@sdrc.UUCP (Sandy Mustard) writes: > >Actually a thermos is a brand name for a dewar bottle! Not quite. Thermos is no longer a trademark. Its trademark status was lost, in part, because the manufacturers used thermos as a generic. Also, the product was too successful; everyone called the things thermoses and not dewars or vacuum bottles. Anyone else who made them had to call their products thermoses or people wouldn't know what they were. The same thing will happen with velcro as soon as the patent expires (or maybe it's already expired, does anyone know?). No one calls it by whatever generic du Pont uses (see, I don't even know what it is) so anyone else making it will have to call it velcro too. Du Pont has already been through this with celophane, so they may have learned the wisdom of trying to fight the inevitable. This has nothing to do with the shuttle (except that they use a lot of velcro on it), so followups should probably go elsewhere. Use e-mail instead. --- Dan Tilque -- dant@mrloog.WR.TEK.COM