Nope. The trademark people don't have some magic "Oh you didn't defend your trademark, now it's gone" feature. There is no meter somewhere measuring how "defended" your mark is, and when it reaches 0% the mark vanishes.
If you are not enforcing certain rights you have, and people come to rely on that, a court might conclude (this is called Estoppel) that you lose the ability to chase them for the violation since apparently you didn't care. But you don't magically lose your ability to chase other people, nor to chase people for trampling on other rights that you do care about. You get to draw the line.
The excuse that "We have to or we'd lose our trademark" is bullshit and people should be called on it when they try it.
The closest is they'll cite examples like Hoover and Xerox where a name mark became so incredibly famous that it was synonymous with the whole class of object and courts ruled that as a result you could not assume when somebody says "Xerox this for me" they're referring to the protected mark any more. These companies, far from "losing" their trademark, instead are huge successful businesses who still have their marks but are not allowed to extend those marks into our whole lives. If you put a Xerox brand on knock-off copiers or printers don't worry, they still have a trademark, they will still sue and they will still win.
Nope. The trademark people don't have some magic "Oh you didn't defend your trademark, now it's gone" feature. There is no meter somewhere measuring how "defended" your mark is, and when it reaches 0% the mark vanishes.
If you are not enforcing certain rights you have, and people come to rely on that, a court might conclude (this is called Estoppel) that you lose the ability to chase them for the violation since apparently you didn't care. But you don't magically lose your ability to chase other people, nor to chase people for trampling on other rights that you do care about. You get to draw the line.
The excuse that "We have to or we'd lose our trademark" is bullshit and people should be called on it when they try it.
The closest is they'll cite examples like Hoover and Xerox where a name mark became so incredibly famous that it was synonymous with the whole class of object and courts ruled that as a result you could not assume when somebody says "Xerox this for me" they're referring to the protected mark any more. These companies, far from "losing" their trademark, instead are huge successful businesses who still have their marks but are not allowed to extend those marks into our whole lives. If you put a Xerox brand on knock-off copiers or printers don't worry, they still have a trademark, they will still sue and they will still win.