Maybe just being a household name will do it for Dropbox even if Box can close more/better enterprise deals.
Maybe, but "Box" evokes "Dropbox". I saw some ads for Free 50GB of storage on Box! and the very first thing I thought was, Is that slang for Dropbox?
So, with the way Box is immediately reminiscent of Dropbox, that may reduce Box's disadvantage in terms of being a household name. Even though it's a new company, it feels familiar.
You may be in for a surprise: Box was founded a few years before Dropbox (2005 I think) and is still bigger, at least in terms of number of employees. I actually had a Box account before Dropbox's. Box also seems to be more popular with enterprise.
This appears to be their UK trademark record, http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/4/EU005097555. [The USPTO trademark search is too blunt a tool for me to be bothered hunting that registration down at the moment.]
This http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/1/UK00002215537 is a registration of the trademark "box" for the relevant computer and communication classes (inter alia 9, 38, 42) which was filed about 7 years before Box UK filed their application. TBH I can't see how the later one was granted RTM status except that this one appears to be an image mark.
"Box" is widely used as a trademark and other companies are using it in the same class. Box presumably can't make the case for infringement of their mark without also making the case that they're infringing someone else's - Boks™ belonging to a Norwegian company for example. It's pretty generic as a term for storage/term in computing.
That aside Dropbox would only be problematic if there was genuine confusion. For example Box UK had a series of offerings with trademarks using "box" as a suffix. If Dropbox were considered infringing, for example, Xbox would also be infringing as they operate within the same class - Box presumably haven't challenged the use of Xbox [which probably predates their use anyway].
I'm wondering if Dropbox could start using a slogan like "Add it to the box" or "Add it to your box"
Box is sufficiently generic that further commoditizing the word box as vernacular with respect to online storage would get people to use the word box (all lowercase) associated with Dropbox first.
Maybe, but "Box" evokes "Dropbox". I saw some ads for Free 50GB of storage on Box! and the very first thing I thought was, Is that slang for Dropbox?
So, with the way Box is immediately reminiscent of Dropbox, that may reduce Box's disadvantage in terms of being a household name. Even though it's a new company, it feels familiar.