June 20, 2004
Trademarks Rant
One of my pet peeves...
Why can't the folks at the US Patent and Trademarks Office ( http://www.uspto.gov ) use a little common sense before processing Trademark and Patent requests?
Here's a good example of what I mean.
A couple of weeks ago I saw an commercial on TV where Pentax is using the tag line "Official Digital Camera of the Internet"
First I laughed, because since no one person or entity owns the Internet, how can anything be declared the Official anything of the Internet? It's impossible!
Being a curious sort of person, I decided to pay a visit to USPTO.gov and search trademarks for those including the words: official, of, the and internet.
To my surprise (not really) I found that there are fifteen different applications for Official this or Offical that of the Internet. Some are dead, mostly because the applicant didn't cross all of their t's and dot all of their i's and several are still working their way through the process.
To my astonishment, "Official Beer of the Internet" is actually a fully registered Trademark! Another company tried to register this trademark too, but they stand no chance since it's already been registered.
How did this happen? Who declared that any company should have received anything close to an Official recognition from the Internet that nobody owns in the first place? Is this some sort of sinister plot by Al Gore to monetize his retirement years? (Just kidding Al, we all know you didn't really invent it.)
In my most humble opinion the USPTO should simply reject requests like this and keep the filing fee for having to put up with idiots who try to claim something they have no right to claim in the first place. This stuff is getting waaaaaaaaaaay out of hand!