BizSugar.com › Legal › “Generic” to You is “Generic” to the USPTO—the Laser-Guided Bomb Case

A basic—but important—principle of trademark law is that generic terms cannot be claimed as trademarks. The rationale for this rule is simple: Starbucks cannot trademark “coffee cup” because everyone needs to be able to call a coffee cup a “coffee cup”. In order to be protectable as a trademark, a term must be sufficiently unique to be identifiable with a single product or service provider in the marketplace. Trademarks are “identifiers of source” (“indicia of origin” to take the legal terminology), and if a term is too generic to associate with a particular company, it will not be subject to trademark protection.