To the surprise of few, Dell is losing its preliminary approval to trademark the phrase “cloud computing.” The Patent and Trademark Office has sent the company a “non-final” refusal of its application to own the term. Dell has six months to submit counter-arguments or the PTO will abandon the application. The office’s grounds for refusal is that the term is too generic. Generally speaking, commonly used words cannot be trademarked unless they are being used in an unexpected way.

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