You know Styrofoam ( 泡沫聚苯乙烯，俗称泡沫塑料 ). It's so bad for theenvironment that small, liberal cities have been banning it for decades. Now big citiessuch as New York and Washington, D.C., are contemplating the same.
    Except that you don't really know Styrofoam. The real STYROFOAM TM has neverbeen used to hold food and beverage containers, which are made out of the less insulative ( 绝缘的 ) and moisture-resistant expanded polystyrene ( 聚苯乙烯). And the maker ofthe real STYROFOAM TM, Dow Chemical, would really like everybody to stop using the term.
    "We're doing everything we can to make sure that it's used properly," says TimLacey, Dow's business director for building solutions in the Americas.
STYROFOAM TM was invented in 1941, and was first used the next year in a CoastGuard life raft. Now, it's used exclusively in building insulation, to float docks and insome molds for floral arrangements. It's often colored light blue.
    "When people see the blue dye, and they see Styrofoam, to our customers, that's apromise that they're going to get the people, the knowledge and the relationship," Laceysays. "We actually do make it blue for that reason."
Protecting that brand is no small task. Lacey says Dow spends "a great deal of timeand money" to do so, with a public affairs staff to keep tabs on the high-profile misusesof the term, and consultants who monitor major media outlets. They typically send outbetween 25 and 30 cease-and-desist letters annually. A couple years ago, during thecongressional cafeteria wars over envirormaentally friendly plates and utensils ( 器皿) ,they even had to send letters to House leadership asking them to please stop maligningtheir product. Usually, Dow says it's an honest mistake and abusers promise to avoid theterm in the future; the company has never actually taken legal action to enforce its rights.
    They can't get everywhere, though. The Internet still abounds with Styrofoamabuse. Case in point: The Washington Post itself, whose reporter Mike DeBonis didn'thear from Dow Chemical after unintentionally misusing the term in a Nov.7 article abouta proposed ban on foam food packaging. Then there's Save Our Shores, a Californiaadvocacy group that heard nothing about its campaign against "Styrofoam", according todirector Laura Kasa.
    Dow is actually facing a fairly common problem in intellectual property protection: "Genericide (非商标化 ) ", which happens when a product becomes so universal thatpeople use it to refer to all products in the category, like the brand names Kleenex andBand-Aid now apply respectively to facial tissue and small adhesive bandages. If theoriginal trademark holder doesn't make a serious attempt to police it, the mark could loseprotection altogether.