You Can't Own the Language of a Craft: Why Trademarking Generic Terms Is Wrong

When a descriptive, widely-used term for a professional technique gets filed as a trademark, something more than a legal question gets raised , it's a question about who knowledge belongs to, and what happens when one person tries to fence off the commons.

There's a dispute quietly stirring in astrological circles that deserves a wider airing. Without getting into specific names or the particular term involved , the legal proceedings are still live and the matter is being watched closely by several national astrological associations , the basic situation is this: someone has attempted to register a trademark over a word that describes a well-established astrological technique. A word in common professional use, internationally, for decades. And that's a problem. Legally, ethically, and practically.

At Wilfred Hazelwood, we believe strongly in the integrity of astrological practice , and part of that integrity is protecting the shared language through which practitioners, clients, and students understand the work. So let's talk about what the law actually says, why this matters, and what professional communities can do when this kind of thing happens.

The Law Already Has an Answer , and It's No

Trademark law, both in the UK and across the EU, exists for a specific purpose: to protect a sign or name that identifies the source of goods or services. That's it. A trademark is meant to tell a customer "this came from this particular business, not any other." It is not , and was never designed to be , a mechanism for claiming ownership over a category of service, a technique, or a descriptive term that a whole profession relies upon.

Article 7(1) of the EU Trade Mark Regulation sets out what are known as "absolute grounds for refusal." Among them: signs or indications which may serve in trade to designate the kind, quality, intended purpose, or other characteristics of the goods or service are not registrable. Neither are signs or indications that have become customary in the current language or in the good-faith practices of the relevant trade. In plain English: you cannot trademark the name of a thing if that name is already the general name everyone uses for that thing.

The EUIPO , the European Union Intellectual Property Office , applies these grounds at examination stage. Applications that consist exclusively of descriptive or generic signs are rejected as a matter of course. The principle is unambiguous, and it exists for very good reason.

Think about it for a moment. If "bread" could be trademarked by a single bakery, every other bakery would lose the ability to describe what they sell. If "yoga" could be claimed by a single studio, the entire practice community would be in legal jeopardy just for calling their classes by their proper name. The same logic applies , without any qualification , to technical terms used across a professional discipline.

The Spectrum of Distinctiveness: Where Generic Terms Always Fail

US trademark law frames this particularly clearly through what lawyers call the "spectrum of distinctiveness." At one end sit fanciful marks , invented words like "Kodak" or "Pepsi," which have no prior meaning and are the strongest, most protectable kind of trademark. Then come arbitrary marks (think "Apple" for computers , a real word, but utterly unrelated to the product). Suggestive marks hint at a product's qualities without directly naming them. Then come descriptive marks, which can sometimes be registered if they've acquired a secondary meaning over many years. And at the far end , off the spectrum entirely, unregistrable under any circumstances , sit generic terms. These are the common names for things, techniques, or categories. You cannot trademark generic terms, full stop, regardless of how much time or money you invest.

The US Patent and Trademark Office states bluntly that generic terms cannot be registered because "every business and entrepreneur has the right to use these everyday terms to refer to these everyday items." The same principle governs the EUIPO and, post-Brexit, the UK Intellectual Property Office.

"If one company were granted a trademark for 'Bread' in the food industry, competitors would be unable to use the word to describe their baked goods."

Replace "bread" with any long-established professional technique name, and you get exactly the problem at hand.

Genericide: When Trademarks Become Generic Over Time

There's a related concept worth knowing about, even if it runs somewhat in the opposite direction. "Genericide" is the process by which a once-distinctive trademark becomes generic through overuse , so embedded in everyday language that it ceases to identify a single source and instead describes a whole category. Classic examples include escalator, aspirin, and zipper , all once proprietary brand names, now just words for things.

The relevant point here is the direction of travel. These were originally distinctive, invented names that became generic through widespread adoption. The situation with astrological technique names runs entirely the other way: the terms started as common descriptors and have always been understood as such by the international professional community. That's not a pathway to trademark registration. That's a barrier to it.

The Ethical Dimension: Shared Knowledge Is Not Up for Grabs

Even setting the law aside , which you don't need to, because the law is quite clear , there's a deeper ethical question here. Astrological knowledge has been built up collectively, across centuries and cultures, by practitioners who shared, debated, refined, and passed on what they learnt. The techniques we use today have names. Those names belong, in a meaningful sense, to the whole community of practitioners who use them.

The Organisation for Professional Astrology's code of ethics is explicit on this: "Astrologers are encouraged to support other astrologers and foster cooperation, so that everyone benefits from our collective knowledge, experience, and insights." The National Council for Geocosmic Research echoes the same principle , that astrologers "encourage inquiry and an open exchange of ideas both outside and within their profession."

Attempting to fence off a shared technique name , to transform a common descriptor into privately owned intellectual property , cuts directly against these values. It doesn't just harm competitors. It harms students, educators, researchers, and the clients who simply need to search online for the type of reading they're looking for.

Imagine a student who has trained in a technique under its established name, earned qualifications in it, and now runs a small practice. Overnight, they are told they can no longer use the word that describes what they do without risking legal action from a trademark holder. That's not protecting intellectual property. That's using intellectual property law as a competitive weapon , and courts and trademark offices have consistently rejected exactly this kind of manoeuvre.

Worth knowing: Under EU trademark law, even where a term might technically obtain registration, a trademark can later be declared invalid if it is found to consist exclusively of signs or indications which have become customary in the professional trade , even after initial approval. Registration is never the final word.

What Can Communities Do?

When an application of this kind is filed, the professional community isn't powerless. Trademark systems in both the EU and UK include formal opposition periods , typically two months from publication of the application , during which any third party with standing can submit an opposition. The grounds for opposition mirror the absolute grounds for refusal: descriptiveness, genericness, bad faith.

Evidence is crucial. Proof that a term has been used routinely in books, course syllabuses, conference programmes, and professional publications for decades is precisely the kind of material that trademark examiners and appeal boards rely upon when determining whether a sign has become customary in professional usage. Published texts, dated academic papers, conference archives , all of this builds the documentary record that an opposition needs.

Professional associations across multiple countries also have legal standing to participate in these processes, and transnational coordination between associations strengthens any opposition considerably. The astrological world has no shortage of well-established bodies , in the UK, Europe, and beyond , with both the credibility and the motivation to weigh in.

There is also, it should be said, the question of bad faith registration. EU trademark regulation permits refusal or invalidation where an application is made in bad faith , and attempting to monopolise a public-domain concept to prevent qualified practitioners from freely describing their own services can and does fall into that category.

The Broader Principle: Techniques Belong to the Discipline

Every serious discipline , medicine, law, engineering, counselling, astrology , develops a shared vocabulary over time. That vocabulary is the connective tissue of professional life. Without it, practitioners cannot train, communicate, or collaborate. Clients cannot search for what they need. Schools cannot name their curricula honestly.

No individual invented language in a vacuum, and no individual who learns a technique from teachers, reads about it in published texts, and practices it alongside colleagues can then lay sole claim to the word that names it. The contribution of one person to a field, however genuine and however significant, does not create ownership over a descriptor that the entire field relies upon. That's not how language works, and it's not how trademark law works either.

We'll be watching developments in this particular situation with interest, as will many others across the astrological community. The techniques we practise, the words we use, the knowledge we share , these things matter. They're worth standing up for.