An Austrian court has ruled that Sony does not have exclusive
rights to the Walkman name for personal stereos. The court referred
to the appearance of the word in a German dictionary without
reference to Sony.
Ananova reports that Sony sued Austrian wholesaler Time Tron
because it described rivals’ personal stereos as Walkmans in its
sales catalogue. That was in 1994. The country’s supreme court this
week ruled that the name is too generic to be owned.
A Sony spokeswoman criticised the judgment describing the
Walkman as “our own property and not a common noun to be used by
anybody.”
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines “Walkman” as a
noun, without reference to Sony. It defines the word as “a type of
personal stereo." By comparison, in its definition of “Hoover,” it
refers to “a vacuum cleaner (properly one made by the Hoover
company).”
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