I withdraw my request. Obviously my google skills need work…
Cite
I apologise for the double post, I missed the edit window
General usage - I’ve seen it dozens of time in the last month. No cite, but common enough that I wouldn’t have even considered it necessary.
As I said, I do allow more leeway in fiction, but not so much as to lowercase a trademarked term. THat’s just asking for trouble that it’s my job to help the publisher avoid. If it doesn’t disrupt the story or flow, I change to the true generic; otherwise, I cap the trademark. (And add a query explaining why.) The publishers I work for generally follow Chicago and want their legal i’s dotted and t’s crossed. I’ve never been chastised for having a character order a cola, soda, pop, or Coke instead of a coke.
One battle I’m forever fighting is “listserv” used to refer to an electronic mailing list. L-Soft is still very interested in preserving its trademark of “Listserv” to refer to its brand of mailing list software. So you do not belong to or subscribe to a listserv, but rather a mailing list or a discussion group or however technical you want to get. “List server” even chaps me a bit because it describes the hardware and not the group itself.
I can’t think of a justification for not at least capping the term per the trademark holder’s wishes. As for odd capping, I know one editor who insists on Ipod and Ebay, and I think that’s going a bit overboard; that just looks goofy and I allow iPod and eBay and GoDaddy. But trademarks that the holder styles in all caps or some other goofy thing (can’t think of an example, but I’ve met both) get just the initial cap.
On preview, I’d like to add that Google appears to still be interested in protecting its trademarks:
[quote=Google]
[ul][li]If you are using a Google trademark, distinguish the trademark from the surrounding text in some way. Capitalize the first letter, capitalize or italicize the entire mark, place the mark in quotes, use a different type style or font for the mark than for the generic name.[/li][li]If you do not capitalize the entire mark, always spell and capitalize the trademark exactly as they are shown in the Google Trademarks and Suggested Accepted Generic Terms below.[/li][li]Use the trademark only as an adjective, never as a noun or verb, and never in the plural or possessive form.[/li][li]Use a generic term following the trademark, for example: GOOGLE search engine, Google search, GOOGLE web search.[/ul][/li][/quote]
How stringent they are in enforcing these, I have no idea. I also note that in the link MJinks gave, all the examples of the use of “Google” were capped.
Wiktionary has a rather generic definition:
Personally, I do not consider googling someone or something to be restricted to using the Google search engine.
Actually, that’s a perfect example. I could see good reason why an author would want to keep a Southern character saying “coke” instead of a “soda” as trying to stay true to certain Southern dialects. And you certainly wouldn’t capitalize “coke” in that case, no matter what CMS says, since the use of “coke” does not mean Coca-Cola beverage and, as a reader, if I saw Coke, I would assume the cola produced by Coca-Cola.
You would be more than chastised if you tried that crap in my fiction. 
You are conflating two distinct and separate uses of the terms. A reference to Kleenex the product is one thing. A reference to someone grabbing a kleenex to blow his nose is very different. The CMS covers the first sense, but not the second.
What you don’t explain is why you should give even a nanoshit about what L-Soft wants people to call things. The term is listserv. There is no other proper term in general usage. It is not your business as a copyeditor or as a publisher to alter general usage, nor it is your business to preserve the trademarks of any company in the world other than the one you are working for. What conceivable justification can you give for doing so?
Except for the uses of google and googling by the site itself in its explanatory material. Simply put, the word has lost its capitalization since 2003, the latest of the cites, as it turned into a generic. Admittedly, copyediting always lags behind usage reality, but the Internet has speeded the obsolescence of usage greatly.
That’s my guess on why it was used by tomndebb. Just being cute.
You are free to stet if you insist on a certain usage; I don’t expect authors to agree with every decision I make. It’s your name on the cover.
As for the rest, we’ll have to disagree on the role of the copyeditor in attempting to (1) help trademark holders preserve trademarks that they are still trying to protect, as defined in MW or at INTA.org, for example, and (2) keep our clients the publishers from getting nastygrams from said trademark holders. This topic comes up frequently on Copyediting-L, and the consensus as far back as I can remember is that most of us maintain the capping as much as possible and appropriate. I might also add that I work primarily on college textbooks, which are going to have a more formal approach than, say, some dude’s blog. I’m aware of the need to break the rules when appropriate, but very rarely do I break CMS 8.162.
I also distinguish between the authoritativeness of cites, and anything beginning with “Wiki” is pretty far down on my list. Similarly, my clients are going to want something more authoritative than “I found it on some Web site.”
Back to work; I’ve spent more than my quota of time on the Dope today, and these chapters aren’t going to edit or proof themselves. I’ve got about ten pounds of shit to cram into a five-pound bag this week. 
I think I found your problem. Google doesn’t want to undermine their own trademark.
That depends on the meaning of “should.” Seriously.
If you are not under any legal obligation to use them and if you are not in any other kind of contractual relationship with the trademark owner, then there’s no point in using them. As, as you can see, style manuals like Chicago discourage using them for no reason.
No, the law does not care whether “citizens” fail to indicate the trademark.
It depends upon the definition of “wrong.”
It will be hard to find a legal cite, because, as I said, the law does not care whether citizens “indicate” trademarks.
If it’s not being used in its trademarked sense, what is the sense in capitalizing it?
Trouble? What trouble? “Improper” use of a trademarked term is neither infringement nor dilution.
There’s one huge reason not to when the speaker does not use it to mean the trademarked term.
Of course they are. Every trademark owner is interested in protecting its trademarks. That’s irrelevant to the matter here.
Also irrelevant. Enforcement of trademarks is not relevant to the type of uses we’re discussing.
A lot of these questions keep coming up because there is a fundamental misunderstanding regarding what trademark law is about. It’s very different from copyright law and patent law. The latter two do care what individual people are doing with regard to copyrighted works or patented inventions. A copyright or a patent gives broad exclusive rights to the holder. Trademark law is not nearly so broad.
Simply speaking, trademark law is fundamentally about preventing customer confusion. It’s not about controlling private individuals’ use of language, whether in private or in public (in publication, for example).
And trademark law is also limited by the concept that individual people have the right to determine for themselves the best use of a term, whether as a trademark or as a generic.
The most important claim under trademark law – trademark infringement – is primarily a tool given to the trademark holder to prevent its competitors from using its trademark in a way that is likely to cause confusion as to the source of goods or services. Trademark infringement law is not meant to ensure that the whole world (“citizens,” as Pasta puts it) uses words in a way that is most favourable to the trademark holder.
I’m not sure if this is directed specifically at me, but given that I’m the only person who cited a “Wiki”-prefixed website, I should point out that that citation was not in reference to the issue at hand with you. That citation was for someone asking about popular usage of the term “to google,” whether it was used colloquially to refer specifically to the Google search engine or any search engine in general. MJinks stated (s)he’s never heard the usage of “to google” to refer to anything but Google. I stated, in my experience, that I have and I had a citation to a website showing that at least other people consider the act of “googling” something not being restricted to the use of the Google search engine. I don’t feel that a question of popular usage requires more authoritativeness than that. On urbandictionary.com (another site I think is worthwhile for issues of popular usage), I found out that the verb “to google” is even used as a general synonym for “to search” in the real world, as in, “Go google the fridge for some mayonnaise.” I personally have not heard that term, but it seems a segment of English speakers is, in fact, using it that generically.
I should also add that in my original response to MJinks, I completely missed the fact that MJinks had already answered the question in the follow-up post.