(United States Ninth Circuit) - In an action under the Lanham Act,seeking cancellation of the GOOGLE trademark on the ground that it is generic, the district court's summary judgment in favor of defendant Google is affirmed where: 1) a claim of genericness or 'genericide, and ' where the public appropriates a trademark and uses it as a generic name for specific types of goods or services irrespective of its source,must be made with regard to a specific type of good or service; 2) the district court thus correctly focused on internet search engines rather than the 'act' of searching the internet; and 3) the verb expend of the word 'google' to mean 'search the internet,' as opposed to adjective expend, and did not automatically constitute generic expend.
Source: findlaw.com