Saxon genitive usage question
My colleagues are in the design department of a given product, and when asked to add that information to the e-mail signature, they have written:
ProductName's Design
I'm objecting that the usage of the Saxon genitive there is incorrect, because the product is neither a person or animal owning anything, and Design in this context is not even a property of the product (Maybe I would admit the Saxon genitive in a context like "I think ProductName's design is not fail-safe"), but an activity.
Am I right? ^_^
update:
After reading the answers and the comments, I think the issue has been clarified a little bit. In this case ProductName is acting as an adjective qualifying Design [Department], so that's the actual reason for not using the genitive case (rather than the product being a "weak entity" unable to possess things, that is merely an stylistic rule of thumb).
While the possessive 's and whose can be used with inanimate objects in many cases, this does not apply to any context. The product feels a bit too much like a person or a topic/theme here if used with the possessive 's; a noun adjective would seem more appropriate. I'd prefer something like this:
Supershaver Design Department
If the name of this product is also the name of the company, as with Skype, you could do it like this:
Skype, Design Department
If your company is a design company and this ProductName is not really the name of a product but exclusively the name of either the company or its founder, you could write it like this:
Killer Design
/
Obama Design
Use of the genitive for inanimate objects is not considered a fault. There are occasional suggestions that it's loose usage, but these are usually very old, prescriptive guides that do not reflect modern usage. For example:
The car's design is woefully dated.
Completely standard in all registers.