TODAY’S TRADEMARK – SELLOTAPE

The “Sellotape” mark was registered on 15 January, 1970 by the Adhesive tape limitedin the Gambia trademark office bearing registration number M19701.

In west London’s Acton neighborhood, Colin Kinninmonth and George Grey invented sellotape in 1937. The name was developed from cellophane, which at the time was a trademarked name; the “C” in the new name was converted to an “S” so that it could also be trademarked.

The most popular brand of transparent, polypropylene-based pressure-sensitive tape in the UK is called Sellotape. Typically, sellotape is used for mending, connecting, sealing, and attaching. Sellotape has evolved into a generic trademark in a similar way that Scotch Tape came to be used in Canada and the US to denote any type of transparent adhesive tape. It obtained an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1980 as an illustration of a generic trademark.