Generacide

A proprietary eponym, or to use its more ordinary name, generic trademark, is a brand name or trade-mark which has fallen into common use.  The world of office supplies is full of them.

We have all sorts difficulties here at Scorpio with a customer asking for the cheapest version of Blue-Tac, Jiffy Bags or Sellotape, to name a few.  When you have a very strong trade name, you tend to find companies have to be quite diverse in finding ways to describe similar products, knowing that their customers are just going to call them by their major competitor’s brand names regardless.  Search on our system for Post-It and you will only get 3M Branded Post-It notes.  If we want to find an alternative brand, we have to search for repositionable, sticky, self adhesive, removable, or quick notes.

And if you want to find cheaper, non branded alternatives to some of the generic trademarks, here are some suggestions to try in the search box:

Sellotape	Sticky tape, clear tape, transparent tape, adhesive tape, Polypropylene tape
Bubblewrap	Bubble film, bubble roll, bubble pack, bubble wrap
Post-it	Repositionable notes, sticky notes, self adhesive notes, removable notes, quick notes
Tipp-ex	Correction pen, correction roller, correction tape, correction fluid, cover-u-p, cover up, corrector
Biro	Ballpoint, ballpen, ball pen
Jiffy bag	Padded bag, padded envelope, padded mail sack, bubble envelope, postal bag, protective mailer, bubble bag, protective envelope
Blue-Tac	Reusable adhesive, re-usable tack, sticky tac, repositionable tack, adhesive putty