R.I.P. Laundromat
US registrations from the 1940s · lapsed, and generic in ordinary US use
The story
Coined by a Westinghouse employee, George Edward Pendray. Westinghouse registered it in the United States in the 1940s for its automatic washing machine and again in the 1950s for coin-operated laundries; the rights later passed to White Consolidated Industries. The word spun out of control and into the dictionary, and the registrations were simply allowed to expire. No court ever had to rule on it, which is its own kind of ending.
The moral
A brand left unattended will wash itself right out of the register.
One grave, one country. Genericide is decided jurisdiction by jurisdiction and class by class: the same word can be the generic name of a product in one country and a live registered mark for the same goods in another. What is described here is the United States.