Joel Martinsen has a great post about search engine Baidu which stimulates others to use Baidu as a verb instead of a name of a brand, but by doing so inadvertently increasing the risk the brand name is used to refer to the generic class of objects, so that eventually the exclusive right to the search engine might be lost.
Mr. Martinsen also gives the historical example of Simmons, an American company in China that specialized in steel and copper spring mattresses and bedding, where this danger manifested itself of dilution of the brand name and genericide of the trademark.
Read Mr. Martinsen’s article here.
