If you go to Dow Chemicals’ own site, or to many other places on the web, you will be pedantically told that there’s no such thing as a “styrofoam cup”. Styrofoam is “a trademark of Dow Chemical for its blue foam polystyrene insulation product”. The stuff they make cups and the like out of is Expanded Polystyrene Beads, not Styrofoam.
But people didn’t start calling the cups “styrofoam” because they knew it was foamed polystryrene beads, and back-forming it from that. People call them “Styrofoam cups” because they’ve been told that they were “Styrofoam cups”, and they don’t know them by any other name, and because most people aren’t aware of the insulation product, and probably will never be. They use “styrofoam” to mean the stuff the cups are made out of because that’s what they were taught, that’s what they’ve always called it, and that’s what everyone they’ve interacted with have called it.
Dow may express disapproval and insist that the cups be called “EPS” or “foam styrene” or even “foam”, but nobody will ever do this, because other people won’t know what they’re talking about. They’d have an easier time changing the name of their own Styrofoam insulation, but they’re not going to do that, I’ll bet.
The question is – how did this state of affairs arise? Who first started called Expanded Polystyrene beads “Styrofoam”, and why didn’t Dow squelch it then? Is it possible that expanded polystyrene beads actually got popularized first, and Dow is standing on a shaky leg? was a lawyer asleep at the switch, and now they’re backing and filling to make up for the lapse? How did they end up in a situation where the same name applies to a distinctly different product in the public’s awareness than in the LegalVerse?
Many trademarks become genericized over time, much the chagrin of their owners. Styrofoam is in the same company as kleenex, waterslide, aspirin, teleprompter, dumpster, band-aid, etc. all of which are product trademarks. Once a trademark enters the common lexicon, its owner loses some ability to enforce the mark. Therefore, they try to prevent that from happening.
Unless someone was using the word styrofoam to refer to something before Dow trademarked it, then Dow gets to decide when and how it is appropriately used. They can’t exactly stop me from calling something a styrofoam cup, but they can (and will) stop me from putting that on a package label.
I think it’s pretty clear that Dow trademarked styrofoam as a product, popularized it, and people started using that name to refer to a similar looking generic plastic foam.
It seems reasonable to suppose that sailors returning from wartime, having encountered STYROFOAM™ products, would also call foam coffee cups by the same name.
And as others have already said, Dow® needs to defend its trademark in order to retain it. Notice that they’ve also trademarked Blue™.
No, it’s not at all clear to me. That’s why I asked the question. Terminus : It’s plausible, but that doesn’t prove anything.
Does anybody know the facts? This sort of speculation ran through my head, as well, but this isn’t like Xerox, kleenex, etc. This is a case where what was a generically similar material with completely different appearance and uses (Styrofoam insulation doesn’t have the beady appearance of “Styrofoam” cups) got conflated in public use with a cheaper, lighter product with different uses. I can’t think of another case that’s a close parallel. I use a “kleenex” for “tissue” when I blow my nose "google’, however much that usage might annoy the folks at Kimberley Clark. I don’t look for a “kleenex” when I want to write something down, or mop up a spill suited for paper towels, even though those products are made of the same basic stuff. I’d only do that if someone else – some manufacturer, probably, or marketer – had started calling his product “kleenex”.
Syrofoam is a different sort of situation than Kleenex, though. Kleenex really does make tissues, so if you ask for a Kleenex, there’s at least a chance that you really will get a Kleenex. But as Dow points out, there isn’t a disposable coffee cup made out of Styrofoam.
Dow has several trademarks on styrofoam.
The usage “styrofoam cup” may have arisen from this one:
Word Mark STYROFOAM
Goods and Services IC 017. US 001. G & S: IRREGULAR SOLID MASSES OF
MULTICELLULAR EXPANDED SYNTHETIC RESINOUS MATERIAL [ AND
GRANULAR MASSES OF THE SAME MATERIAL COMMINUTED ].
FIRST USE: 19450911. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19450911
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Design Search Code
Serial Number 71583642
Filing Date August 18, 1949
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1A
Change In Registration CHANGE IN REGISTRATION HAS OCCURRED
Registration Number 0531823
Registration Date October 10, 1950
Owner (REGISTRANT) DOW CHEMICAL COMPANY,
THE CORPORATION DELAWARE MIDLAND MICHIGAN 48674
It’s certainly closer than:
BLOCKS, BOARDS, AND OTHER SHAPES OF MULTICELLULAR EXPANDED SYNTHETIC RESINOUS MATERIAL FOR CONSTRUCTION PURPOSES. FIRST USE: 19450911. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19450911
or
MULTICELLULAR EXPANDED SYNTHETIC RESINS [ , ADHESIVE SUBSTANCES FOR INDUSTRIAL PURPOSES AND FOR USE IN CONSTRUCTION ]. FIRST USE: 19450911. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19450911
I think it’s just because the stuff the cups are made out of resemble Styrofoam. When Styrofoam was first invented, it probably caused a bit of a stir. Lightweight, good insulator, made a name for itself that people latched onto, nobody had see anything like it before.
Now somebody familiar with Styrofoam sees a foam cup. Made out of something that, to the casual non-chemist, looks vaugely similar to that wonderful stuff Styrofoam they saw some time back. Must be a Styrofoam cup.
During my stay in Canada it was funny that Aspirin™ was still a registered Bayer trademark. Of course everyone says aspirin like we say kleenex, but you’ve got to look for acetylsalicylic acid in the store.
I’d like to license Styrofoam® and make cups out of it, just to shut everyone up.
There is a registered trademark for DOW STYROFOAM BRAND:
This seems to be what the Dow® website is talking about when there are no coffee cups made out of STYROFOAM™. This is what Dow® now wants STYROFOAM™ to mean. There’s also a Dow® trademark on Blue referenced in the description above, which is:
Interesting, though, that DOW® still maintains their trademark for IRREGULAR SOLID MASSES OF MULTICELLULAR EXPANDED SYNTHETIC RESINOUS MATERIAL [ AND GRANULAR MASSES OF THE SAME MATERIAL COMMINUTED ] which appears to be what the coffee cups are made out of.
Put it this way: If I’m in a restaurant, and I want a gelatin dessert, and ask for Jell-o, the Jell-o company is happy. But if I’m in a restaurant and I order Jell-o, and the waiter brings me a dessert which is actually made with Royal gelatin, the Jell-o company is very unhappy. But the first situation leads to the second, so they try to nip things in the bud.
There’s also the matter that, whether they’re upset about a particular situation or not, the law forces them to complain, because if they don’t publicly defend their trademark, they’ll lose it.
Aha! There is a whole separate section on the Dow website about crafts made with STYROFOAM™ Brand products, quite distinct from the insulating material: STYROFOAM Crafts
You can get STYROFOAM™ Brand products in various sizes and shapes like balls, cones, and blocks. It also says you can get them in white or green, instead of Blue™. No cups, though.
