Cartoon stick figure pointing towards a chalkboard with “Wite-Out” written in large chalk letters — representing a blog post about the Wite-Out word mark trademark registration.

Trademark: Wite-Out

First Used: January 1966

First Registered: February 1974

Current Owner: BIC CORPORATION [1]

Trademark Type: traditional trademark; word mark

Primarily Associated With: typing and drawing correction fluid [2]

Generic Phrase: correction fluid, as in WITE-OUT® Brand correction fluid

Also A Trademark For: correction pens for type and ink; correction tape for type and ink and dispensers sold as a unit [3]

Brief (and likely incomplete) History: [4]

Wite-Out® Brand correction fluid was invented in the 1960s by two friends hoping to solve an annoying problem at the time: they wanted to correct typing errors easily but available correction fluids at that time would smudge ink on photostatic paper. After some experimentation, George Kloosterhouse, a clerk at the General Electric Company, and Edwin Johanknecht, an insurance-company basement waterproofer, created their solution: the “Wite-Out WO-1 Erasing Liquid” was introduced in 1966 (not to be confused with the LIQUID PAPER® brand).

The original formula was water-based to allow simple clean-up, but it resulted in long drying times and inconsistent coverage on non-photostatic paper. After being purchased by Archibald Douglas in the 1980s, the formula was changed to be solvent-based and was optimized for different types of media. In 1992, BIC purchased the Wite-Out® brand to broaden its range of stationery products.

[1] Wite-Out, BIC, available at https://us.bic.com/en_us/writing/correction-tapes/wite-out.html.

[2] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 978,134, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=72450352&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.

[3] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 2,261,228, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75550522&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.

[4] Wite-Out, ACADEMIC KIDS, available at https://academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Wite-Out; Our Story, BIC, available at https://corporate.bic.com/en-us/group/our-story; Who Still Buys Wite-Out, and Why?, THE ATLANTIC, posted March 19, 2019, and available at https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/who-still-buys-wite-out-and-why/567311/.