Trade mark lawyers will tell you that you should never use your
trade mark as a verb, or allow others to do so. Why? Because,
it's the first step on a very slippery slope, one that could
lead to your trade mark becoming generic. And when your trade mark
becomes generic – in other words a generally-accepted,
descriptive term for the product you sell, it ceases to function as
a trade mark. With the result that you can no longer enforce your
trade mark rights, and even lose your trade mark registrations.
This makes the recent US decision of Elliot v Google
(which held that Google has not become a generic word, and that
Google's registrations for the trade mark Google are not
invalid) very interesting because it does suggest that the courts
may, in certain circumstances, tolerate a certain amount of verb
usage of a trade mark. In this case the court agreed that the word
'google' is used as a verb, in other words that
people will often say that they will google something,
