What term, originally a trademark for a moving staircase, became a generic word? The term is escalator.
Charles Seeberger coined “escalator” for a moving-stairway design and trademarked the word around 1900. Seeberger worked with the Otis Elevator Company, which later used the name for its moving-stairway products. The word was built to suggest upward movement and became closely associated with the new technology.
As competing manufacturers and the public began using “escalator” as the ordinary name for any moving staircase, it stopped identifying one company’s goods. That process is called genericization: a trademark becomes so widely used as a product category name that it loses its source-identifying function.
In 1950, the decision in Haughton Elevator Co. v. Seeberger led to cancellation of the trademark. The ruling treated “escalator” as a generic name rather than an exclusive brand. This differs from “elevator,” which was already a general term for a lifting device. Other former or threatened genericized marks include aspirin, cellophane, trampoline, and thermos, though their trademark status varies by country.