After reading about TiVo‘s objection to the use of its brand as a verb I decided to find out why this might be. I wrote the following question at the media enquiries section of the site (hey, I’m media). It’s badly formatted and it took four attempts to submit it (glad I copy-pasted it from Word) due to the ridiculously short form entry field (450 characters) and its apparent refusal to accept standard punctuation (semi-colons and equal signs) – although it didn’t bother to tell me this bit.

I read (www.engadget.com/entry/1234000370023599) with interest your objection to TiVo being used as a verb. This surprises me. I associate ‘TiVo’ as a leading DVR, and I have likely used it as a verb (I don’t currently own any DVR). Corporate history shows successful front-runners become household names (Hoover – vacuum, Xerox – photocopy, Sellotape – sticky cellophane, etc) I’m interested to know why this is a problem to you.

I wonder what the reply will be.