Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
It's just a brand name for Paracetamol, isn't it? Weird how the entire discussion seems based around the brand name.
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Either it’s like talking about hoovers, portakabins and roller blades in the UK (trademarks that have entered into common speech) or else they’re taking a calculated swipe at the Tylenol trademark owner.
Paracetamol is available as a generic drug in the US. Its regulated name, spelled in US English, is acetaminofen.
I don’t know whether the TM owner is crafting a sternly-worded complaint to send to the White House, but when I was a reporter we used to get legal letters every time we accidentally used trademarks instead of generic names. We had a list of ones we weren’t meant to use, including some surprising ones (“tannoy system” springs to mind as a less-well-known one). The owner of the ‘roller blade’ trademark was our most frequent correspondent because ‘in-line skates’ were all the rage in the 90s when I was writing for the papers and hooligans buzzing pedestrians was one of our staple stories.