Retro Art Glass is a Generic Term

Retro art glass is generic term used to describe art glass that was produced 1950’s to the 1980’s. Much like the term vintage art glass, also a generic term, retro art glass was produced by many different companies including Blenko, Fenton, Anchor Hocking, Fostoria and many others too numerous to list.

In addition to NOVA-Antiques.com and Outasite!! Collectibles, these terms, sometimes used interchangeably appear in many of the top websites including Amazon.com, Ebay, All Things Green and others too numerous to list.  In fact, plugging retro art glass into the Google search engine brings back about  1.5 million search results and on Yahoo it brings back more than 20.2 million results.  These entire search results refer to art glass produced in the past.  Why this company has decided to single us out, we are unsure.  However we will find out and we will make them pay damages for singling us out and getting our listing removed.

This week, we were informed that a California company had trademarked the name with patent and trademark office.  After doing some research, we have found that a generic name cannot be trademarked and that it would be difficult at best for the company to stop others from using the generic term.  One of the most recent cases involves Hotels.com, which was not allowed to trademark the name because hotel is a generic term used to describe temporary lodging. As another example, Pepsi ® and Coke ® are brand names or trademark names but cola and soda cannot be trademarked.

According to an article on the Citizen Medial Law Project, “a generic name can never receive trademark protection.” Additionally, an Overview of Trademark Law on a Harvard University website states, “a generic mark is a mark that describes the general category to which the underlying product belongs. For example, the term "Computer" is a generic term for computer equipment. Generic marks are entitled to no protection under trademark law. Thus, a manufacturer selling "Computer" brand computers (or "Apple" brand apples, etc.) would have no exclusive right to use that term with respect to that product. Generic terms are not protected by trademark law because they are simply too useful for identifying a particular product. Giving a single manufacturer control over use of the term would give that manufacturer too great a competitive advantage.”

Due to this trademark dispute, Outasite!! Collectibles’ listing for retro art glass was removed from the Yahoo search engine listing today.  Until we successfully get our listing placed back on Yahoo, please click here to see our retro art glass on Outasite!! Collectibles.