The New York Times has an article on the development of Ultimate, commonly known as Ultimate Frisbee, as a mainstream sport. However, the article uses the term Ultimate Frisbee and Ultimate interchangeably. When I checked the Frisbee website, I discovered that the company Frisbee uses the term Ultimate Frisbee, which is an interesting choice for a company that has historically struggled with its brand being a generic term for flying discs. Even though trademark lawyers advise their clients to adopt and maintain a vigorous policy for preventing genericide, Frisbee’s marketing people must feel that there are competing benefits of having very popular and fast-growing disc sports associated with it brand (there is also the popular game Frisbee golf, or disc golf). Perhaps the company believes that it can both promote the sport as Ultimate Frisbee and continue enforcement efforts against competitors using the trademark. On the other hand, the governing body for the sport uses the term Ultimate. The Ultimate Players Association most likely has an interest in using the generic term “disc” and requiring Frisbee to pay for the privilege of having its brand associated with the sport (the official disc of the UPA Championship Series is not a Frisbee disc, it’s a Discraft disc).
For those unfamiliar with genericide, a company can lose its trademark if its trademark becomes generic. This can happen if a trademark becomes the actual name for a product, such as the former trademark “Escalator” becoming the term for a moving staircase. Once this happens, the trademark no longer functions as an indicator that the underlying product is associated with a particular company, which causes the trademark owner to lose its its ability to prevent competitors from using its mark. A company with real dominance in the marketplace has to go to great lengths to remind and persuade people to use its trademark as an adjective, and not as a noun or verb. In this case, if Frisbee was concerned about genericide, it would be vigilant about the use of Frisbee as a noun and insist that the term Frisbee disc, or Frisbee® disc, be used. Such efforts usually include writing to dictionaries, media outlets and also enforcing correct usage within the company. It’ll be interesting to see if either Frisbee or the Ultimate Players Association write to the Times asking for a correction.