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From: Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@parhasard.net>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: The trademark 'ESCALATOR' was registered (29-5-1900)
Date: Thu, 30 May 2024 08:27:56 +0100
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 Ar an naoú lá is fiche de mí Bealtaine, scríobh Ross Clark: 

 > "The world's first moving-step machine...demonstrated at a Paris trade fair in
 > 1900..."
 > The trademark was registered by Charles Seeberger, who worked for the Otis
 > Elevator Company.
 > 
 > "The use of capital letters and inverted commas shows the word's special
 > status." (Crystal)
 > 
 > BUT fifty years later (in _Haughton Elevator Co. v. Seeberger_), Otis lost the
 > rights because the court ruled the word had become generic.
 > "A crucial piece of evidence was the way Otis itself was using it, in such
 > advertisements as:
 > 	To thousands of building owners and managers, the Otis trademark
 >         means the utmost in safe, efficient economical elevator and
 >         escalator operation."

Otis is impressive as a business, still with a huge proportion of the lifts out
there all these years later, when so many other similar businesses have been
outcompeted by East Asian manufacturers. 

-- 
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)