eCig trademark and patents???!!!

[Texas]

I was looking around at other sites and came across this, which from what I see they are saying they have these for the name ecig?

Electronic Smoking Cigarette Official Site - About Us

E-CigTM, E-CigarTM, E-CigaretteTM, E-CigarilloTM, E-PipeTM, E-MiniCigTM, E-PackTM, USB-eCigTM, E-CartridgeTM, E-LiquidTM, all are the trademark of The E-CIG Technology Inc. Ltd.. For developing the E-Cig products, we have obtained Patents: 2006301649379, 2006301649383, ZL2006 2 0135072.8, ZL2005 2 0031712.6 and applied the patents with the patent pending number: 200620119250.8, 200620167599.9, 200820005536.2, 200510017951.0, 200710054948.5. We will continuously do our best to provide you the constant innovation, the most comprehensive electronic smoking products with the competitive prices.

 

[dc2k08]

Yes, they certainly make those claims. 'e-cig' and 'e-cigarette' and many other terms are in fact trademarks claimed by cixi e-cig. Many of their claimed trademarks have since been popularised and they have never attempted to prevent their mis-use. As a result, a court would probably hold that they have in fact been 'genericized' and are now a part of the common lexicon.

Many companies do not like when their trademarks are 'genericized' as it gives their competitors the right to use these trademarks to describe their products. This then weakens the original company's brand.

Google actually sends out mail to large media outlets who use the term 'to google' in place of 'use a search engine' in an effort to protect their trademark, educating them of the issue and asking them to correct the error.

Genericized trademark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia