Heroin
Launched 1898 · Bayer's US trademark rights lost in 1919
A historical note
This entry is a piece of pharmaceutical and trademark history rather than a joke, and it is written that way.
Diacetylmorphine was first synthesised by the English chemist C. R. Alder Wright in 1874. It was prepared again in 1897 by Felix Hoffmann at Bayer in Elberfeld, and from 1898 Bayer sold it under the trademark Heroin, marketed as a cough suppressant and as a supposedly non-addictive substitute for morphine. That second claim was wrong, and the consequences of it were severe and are still being counted.
Bayer lost its rights in the name (along with its rights in Aspirin) in several countries under the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, following the German defeat in the First World War. In the United States the company's assets and marks had already been seized during the war. The word passed into ordinary use as the name of the substance.
Why the substance is controlled today
Diacetylmorphine is a highly addictive opioid. In the United States the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 brought it under regulation, Congress prohibited its manufacture, importation and sale in 1924, and it is now a Schedule I controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Internationally it is listed in Schedules I and IV of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.
Its medical use has not vanished everywhere: under the generic name diamorphine it remains a prescription analgesic in the United Kingdom, and several European countries use it in supervised treatment for opioid dependence.
One entry, one country. Trademark rights are lost jurisdiction by jurisdiction and class by class. The 1919 loss described here concerns Bayer's rights in the United States and certain other countries; Bayer remains a live trademark owner in its own right everywhere.