OK, this is great. At the same time as the patent office is granting business method patents that everyone knows have tons of prior art, they are busy rejecting trademarks, based on who knows what, exactly. Case in point: the organization "Dykes on Bikes" was denied a trademark of their name because the word "dyke" was vulgar. Nevermind that dykes have used that word in a positive self-affirming way for 30 years now, and there is tons of evidence for that. (I mean why call your organization by a name if you didn’t think it self-affirming??)
LawGeek has a nice little rant on the issue – much more in depth than I could provide. Boing Boing also has a post on this.
So when is the USPTO going to get their act together? I’m not holding my breath. I think what I might be waiting for is for the whole system to fall in on itself.
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