GAMES magazine article and cover

Having been a GAMES magazine reader for most of my life, I can't help but brag just a little bit here. The upcoming December 2004 edition (the 'Buyer's Guide' issue), features a six page article about my LEGO building career.

Granted, that's not exactly game or puzzle related, but the cover does feature a puzzle using a LEGO snowman I designed exclusively for the magazine.

I have written a little bit about it here:
http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/snowman.html

Those with subscriptions have likely gotten their copies; it should hit the newsstands in a week or so.

Now if only I'd thought to mention my tournament Scrabble playing or Puzzle Parties during the interview [grin]...

cheers,

eric harshbarger

Congratulations on the cover!

Why is LEGOs bad form? Is LEGO an acronym?

Basically it has to do with trademark issues and the fact that LEGO is the name of the company, not the toy. I address it on my FAQ:
http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/faq.html

bottom of page.

Thanks! I see that LEGO comes from the Danish 'Leg godt', meaning 'Play well'. Have you collected any of the (non-brick) wooden toys that LEGO made during the depression?

Nope, to be honest, I'm not much of a 'LEGO collector'... all of the bricks I have (currently over 500,000) are all really part of my supply used for commissions. I do still have all of my old sets that I had as a child, but I have not bought any recent ones as 'collectables'.

Cheers - Ian

Isn't that sort of brand recognition the kind of thing that leads to the loss of trademark?

'Mark J. Tilford' schrieb:

AFAIK the point of a trademark is that you cannot legally lose it as long as you keep the registration up.

In fact, in the EU the development has been in part reversed: some products that contain a place name (e.g. Champagne or Parmesan cheese) can carry that name only if they come from the region named; if you're producing a wine in exactly the same way Champagne is produced in the Champagne, but you do it elsewehere, you product may be indistinguishable from Champagne, but you may not commercially call it that (any more).

Obpuzzle: are there other trademarks than Lego that have become common household words _internationally_?

For example, do 'Zipper' and 'Velcro' extend beyond the English language?

I imagine they would for drugs and chemical names. But here's what's puzzling me: you're posting from Germany, right? So don't you know whether thopse words exist in German?

George Weinberg schrieb:

Thanks for educating me! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark explains everything in detail, and I've also found the provisions in our law that I assume have a similar effect, although they refer to common use in trade.

I know they don't (we have 'Reißverschluss' = rip-fastener, 'Klettverschluss'=burr-fastener); but that is no proof they don't extend internationally, because they could be used in other languages. It's like knowing that 91 isn't divisible by 2; it can still be prime.

I've since thought of Nylon; Wikipedia claims the word was never trademarked.

It is hard to think of brand names that not only see international use, but are also generic (i.e. aren't used for the products of the brand-holder only). Would 'Aspirin' be used for any headache tablet containg Acetylsalicylacid?

To 'xerox' something might also be worth investigating; the only German word is, alas, the translation of photocopying.

'cornflakes' might work: suitably international, suitably generic (I believe). Words from the wikipedia list (see link above) that I think work internationally are

* aspirin [sic!] * celluloid * dictaphone * ethernet * freon * frisbee * gokart * grammophone * heroin * hula hoop * jeep * jet ski * kevlar * kleenex * lego [sic!] * linoleum * LP * mylar * pampers * ping-pong * polaroid * tabasco * teflon * thermos (German 'Thermoskanne' = thermos flask) * tupperware (I remember I thought of that one last night!) * valium * vaseline * VHS * walkman * yo-yo (spelled 'Jojo' here) * zeppelin

Now who makes these words into a puzzle?

Cheers

Michael Mendelsohn and George Weinberg write, or perhaps schrieben:

'Aspirin' was introduced as a brand name in numerous countries. In many countries (including Britain and the US) it has lost trademark status and simply means ASA. In many other countries (including Canada) it is still a trademark and refers to a particular brand of ASA.

It does seem to meet the requirements of the question, though.

By the way, there is a common myth that its loss of trademark status in the US was a side-effect of Germany losing the First World War. It is true that the Bayer company lost the US rights to the name Aspirin as a result of the war, but it wasn't directly because Germany lost; it was simply because the state of war existed (in the case of the US, for several years after 1918). As long as it did, German assets in the US were being seized all the time, and handed to US companies. Bayer lost their US subsidiary, and with it both the US and the Canadian rights not only to the name Aspirin, but also the name Bayer itself. The *new* owner