Opinion: Get off my cloud

Oh puhleese! Just shoot me now and get it over with. Dell is trying to make ‘cloud computing’ into its very own trademark.

Note to Dell: slap a trademark on nobhead while you’re at the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO).

You’re going to need it. I can’t decide which is worse – Dell for trying to trademark bits of the English vocabulary or the US PTO for considering this inane request in the first place.

But hey, if it’s okay to do this then why don’t some other IT vendors rush down to the PTO and stake their claims?

Microsoft could trademark “better late than never” and “blue screen of death”. Apple could trademark “no comment”. HP could trademark “takeover turmoil” while EMC should be happy to grab “on a clear disk you can seek forever”.

It’s bad enough that US companies can already patent just about anything they like whether or not they invented it or even despite the fact “it” already exists in some other non-US part of the world.

Now we have to suffer their grab for whole phrases and the next thing you know they’ll be telling us to spell their trademarks properly or get sued.

It’s enough to make you want to go out and exercise their second amendment, then apply it to the nearest US IT vendor.