Is Velcro a brand name? Hook and loop, the de Mestral patent and the trademark

Is Velcro a brand name? Yes. Velcro is a trademark of Velcro Companies, the maker of the original fastener, and the general term for the product is hook and loop fastener. The distinction matters to anyone who writes about clothing and shoes, because the brand is so well known that it is routinely used for the whole category.

Is Velcro a brand name? What the sources say

Wikipedia describes Velcro as a brand of fastening devices known as hook and loop fasteners, hook and pile fasteners or touch fasteners, and says the brand name "is often used generically." The company's own history page uses the name in capitals with the registered mark and describes "VELCRO Brand hook and loop." In plain terms, the company wants the brand reserved for its products, and the rest of the world says Velcro for everything.

The name is a blend of two French words. Wikipedia gives them as velours, meaning velvet, and crochet, meaning hook. The company's page spells the first one velour and says de Mestral named his company with the combination. The spelling differs between sources; both point to the same idea.

From burrs to patents

According to Velcro Companies, the story starts in 1941, when Swiss engineer George de Mestral returned from a hunting trip in the Alps and found burrs clinging to his wool pants and his dog's fur. Under a microscope he saw tiny hooks gripping the fur. Wikipedia places the plant as burdock.

Turning that into a product took years. The company says de Mestral searched for a material that could copy the burr's hook and found nylon in Lyon, France, then built a device inspired by barbershop clippers to trim woven loops into hooks.

Dates for the first patent differ slightly by source. The company says de Mestral filed his original patent in Switzerland in 1951 and that it was granted in 1954; Wikipedia says the patent was granted in 1955. We note both rather than choose, because we could not open the Swiss document.

The U.S. patent, in his own words

The American document is easy to read. U.S. patent 3,009,235, "Separable Fastening Device," was filed on May 9, 1958 and issued on November 21, 1961. George de Mestral of Nyon, Switzerland is named as inventor and the patent is assigned to International Velcro Company, Establishment, of Nyon.

Its stated object is the provision of "a separable fastener consisting of two elements provided with cooperating hooking members characterised in that one of said elements is provided with hooks and the other with loops." The description uses a velvet type fabric whose loops are formed by supplementary warp threads passed over metal bars, called lancets, in a loom, and says those threads are preferably of an artificial material such as nylon.

Note what is absent: the patent never uses the word Velcro. That is why hook and loop is the right generic term in a news story or care label.

From a hard sell to sneakers

The first reactions were cool. Wikipedia reports that early fasteners looked as though they were made from leftover bits of cheap fabric, so they were not sewn into clothing or widely used in the early 1960s. It notes a fashion show at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York in 1959 and a column by Sylvia Porter on August 25, 1958 announcing that a "zipperless zipper" had been invented. The aerospace industry gave it its first break, which reinforced the view that it had limited everyday use.

The company says its fasteners moved into footwear and apparel starting in the late 1960s, and that NASA relied on them during the Apollo 11 mission. If you want to know where that shows up in fashion today, think of strap closures on kids' sneakers, adjustable cuffs, outdoor jackets and the occasional runway reinterpretation. We do not have a sourced count of how many garments use it, so we do not offer one. Wikipedia adds that Velcro fasteners were used on the suits, sample collection bags and lunar vehicles during the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, and the company says molded hook products replaced wires and hog rings in automotive seating in 1988 and appeared on diaper tabs in 1992. Those uses explain why the brand name travels far beyond fashion, and why the fastener's reputation has often been industrial first and stylish second.

What happened to the patent

Wikipedia states that in 1978 de Mestral's patent expired, which prompted a flood of low cost imitations from Taiwan, China and South Korea. It also says the trademark is the subject of more than 300 trademark registrations in over 159 countries. Those figures come from the reference article, not a filing we could open.

How to write it

• In general copy, say "hook and loop fastener" or "touch fastener."
• Use Velcro, with the capital, for the company's products or when quoting a brand that names it.
• Do not say "velcro" as a verb in a product description if you mean a competitor's tape.
• If a brand's spec sheet says "Velcro closure," ask whether it is actually the company's product. That is a question of fact we cannot answer for any specific shoe.

The bottom line: Velcro is a brand, hook and loop is the product, and the 1961 U.S. patent is the cleanest primary source for what de Mestral invented.