Estrangement is chemical.

Futility Trip

Much as I like this job I have now, it has the looming disadvantage that I spend all my time working at a computer.  This in itself isn't so bad, except that then I get home and have email messages like this one to write, which involves more computer time.  I wish I could send email by, say, kneading bread.  That would be interesting.

Anyway, something I've learned about Steve, the guy I work for, is that he is given to impetuous decisions.  At 9:05 today I mentioned to him that we could register "ecos.org" as a domain name for our website.  At 9:10 he mused that it would also be a good deal to TRADEMARK the name "ECOS" (he had read an article in the Post about a lawsuit that Chevy Chase Bank was filing against Chevy Chase Computer, Inc., whose web site is "www.chevychase.com.") But he vaguely remembered having some difficulty about that awhile back.

At 9:20 I nosed my way onto the website of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  There, I learned that it wasn't possible to look up trademarks online or call in to ask if a certain trademark is already taken.  You have to visit one of the USPTO's libraries.  There are a number of them scattered around the country, but of course the main one is the in Washington D.C. vicinity.

At 9:30 I mentioned all this to Steve.  At 9:35 I convinced him that I should really go over to the USPTO and find out what I could.

At 9:45 I was on my way out the door on a Work Field Trip to the USPTO.

As I left, I mused that ECOS really has no need to register its name as a trademark, or even really register ecos.org as a domain name. It's a small operation and the people who want to know how to find it, know how to find it.  But if Steve was on a trademark kick, and if that kick allowed me to travel, well, hey, everybody's happy.

I was very happy until I stepped outside.  The temperature at that time was 97 degrees.  It was on its way up. I walked past the Capitol toward the House office buildings, where I had to use the bank machine.  The streets were surprisingly empty, and everything was hazy.  People walked more slowly, even the cars were slowed down by the heat.  I'm used to being stopped by tourists asking for directions around there, but this time I was stopped THREE times by different people.  And while their mouths were saying "which way to the entrance?" and "is there a McDonald's near here?", what they were really saying is "from whence comes our relief?" and "canst thee provide a coolness to balm our blistering skin?"

Once I got to the Longworth building I discovered that most people were hiding underground.  It was very crowded down there where it was cool.  The passages that led from there to the driveway that comes out near the Metro stop were filled with people, most heading from one place to another, but many just hanging out in the corridors, enjoy the cool.

Anyway, I took the Metro to Crystal City, where, a lady on the phone had assured me, the USPTO office wasn't far from.  Jonathan and Rachel, especially, will remember Crystal City.  It is a sinister place.  The unnatural coagulation of high-scale business and government-related operations in northern Virginia has created a place of uncanny cleanliness, orderliness, and general evil.  Crystal City is mostly office buildings, with several hotels and a fair number of restaurants.  Shuttles from the airport trundle by regularly, and there's even a Crystal Shuttle that does constant loops around the area for free.  If you have a place you need to go in Crystal City, it can be quite easy, but if you're just looking for, say, a gas station, or a place to eat, it conspires against you.  The tall office buildings all begin to look the same.  The street names blend together in your mind.  You try to find your way out, looking for a human being in something other than a suit, but with no success.

The good news is that the USPTO office wasn't IN Crystal City, but just south of it, not far from the airport.  The bad news is that that meant it was FAR from the Metro.  So this leg of my journey was a trudge through Crystal City in one hundred degree heat.  It was not pleasant. I hadn't discovered the Crystal Shuttle yet at that point, so it was just me and the sidewalk and the pavement.  There are a lot of shrubberies and small trees in Crystal City, but they all have very distinct boundaries and are very well trimmed.  They are not allowed, for example, to give shade, or to let their roots buckle too much of the surface.  So it was very hot. Eventually I made it to a big, box-shaped building.  The USPTO.

I noticed the huge banks of card catalogues in the trademark library the minute I walked in.  I naturally assumed that they were there for the same reason the ones were there at the university's library - as a sort of backup in case the computers or down, just hanging out until the computer indexes are stable and reliable enough that the old records are no longer needed.

Oh, no.  The trademark office, which handles hundreds if not thousands of trademark requests every day, was still quite paper-oriented.  I had to look through the pending trademarks as well as the registered trademarks in long card-catalogue boxes with sheaves of paper stuck in the with application information, grainy photocopies of logos and lettering, and plenty of illegible signatures and stamps.  The place was crowded, too, mostly with lawyers (judging from their briefcases and laptops and odors). There was only a tiny corner of one table open where I could scribble things down in my notepad.

Every time I confront or work within government bureaucracy, I become awed by the size of the country in which we live.  It doesn't hit you when you consider numbers, either population or dollar figures, in millions and billions. Those hold no weight.  It hit me when I discovered that the name "ECOS" - a random, innocuous, not-vaguely-suggestive-of-much-of-anything name, has trademarks on it from no less than ten different people and organizations. This is allowed, of course, as long as the organizations registering the trademark do different things.  There was a lady in New Hampshire who sold "ECOS" birdhouses, and a company in Florida that sold "ECOS" air conditioning units for computer rooms.  There was also a line of "ECOS" hair products.  None of these conflicted much with ECOS as an environmental organization, fortunately, so I thought my job was done.  But Steve had mentioned that the trademark application had failed a couple years ago, so I wanted to be sure.  The lady behind the desk told me that I could speak to an attorney, on the fourth floor.

The fourth floor was, apparently, where the attorneys hung out.  They weren't what you'd expect, though.  They had small offices with boxes piled up in the corners.  They had thin walls so you could hear the conversations going on in the next room. These weren't tax attorneys, after all, or famous criminal prosecutors.  These were government attorneys at the patent & trademark office.  The lady who led me into her office for a consultation was old, near retirement, her whole face covered with tiny wrinkles.  She had the voice of an unrepentant lifetime smoker.  She was surprisingly ecstatic to have a visitor, though.  I explained the situation and she looked up "ECOS" on her computer.  See, SHE had access, easy access, to a computerized database of all trademarks, registered, pending, and rejected.  Why everyone two floors down was made to wade through reams of photocopied paperwork is a bit of a mystery.  She found the same stuff I found, except for one important exception that I didn't find - "ECOS Communications, Inc." An advocacy group representing environmental concerns to businesses, government agencies, etc.  Not exactly what my ECOS was, but close enough to prevent us from registering the name.

You wouldn't expect an aging government attorney with wrinkles to be a sound effect person, but she was.  She made little sputtering noises while her computer was doing the search.  And when she was describing to me that an application for a trademark was likely to be rejected, she made a FOOOSH noise as her finger did a little downward spiral.  When we were just about done, her tongue made a CLACK CLACK CLACK at the back of her throat before she said "It sure is nice to have visitors." Creepy, yes, but cool at the same time.  There aren't enough sound effects people out there. Ftang, ftang.

On the way back I discovered the Crystal Shuttle, and thus got to the Metro much more quickly.  Hungry, I ventured my way down into the food court / underground shopping mall.  It reminded me a lot of the vast underground sprawl you can find in Tokyo, except that here there was no dirty edge to it, no piles of garbage in the corners at the fringes, no random marketeers or shoeshiners in between the posh clothing stores. Everything was posh, neat, and clean.  And crowded - as in D.C. proper, people were hiding underground because of the heat.  Plus it was lunchtime. This turned out to be a big bonus, since one of the fancy restaurants had somebody out front giving away free samples of their new salmon dish.  Get this: they gave you a sample plate that not only had a decent chunk of salmon on it, it also had some french fries, a hunk of bread, AND a little slice of really really good cake.  So I had a sample plate and walked around a bit and took another sample plate when the person who was giving them out changed.  At the very least, this antiseptic office and consumer wasteland had given me a free lunch.


       *       *       *        *       *       *