The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been making headlines lately, but not in a positive light. Recent news includes the apparent approval of Dell's trademark application for the term "cloud computing" which our sister publication, Computerword, now reports has been pulled. The second story, which comes via Slashdot, shows that an IBM patent was granted for the phrase most often heard in U.S. grocery stores: "Paper or plastic?" U.S. Patent 7,407,089 was granted on Monday for a process in which a customer's preference for paper or plastic grocery bags could be kept on file and pop up a graphic alerting the cashier, eliminating the "unnecessary inconvenience for both the customer and the cashier" of asking a question and having it answered.

Commenter Owen Smigelski, a trademark attorney, claimed in the comments on the Dell article that "examiners at the USPTO usually catch phrases that are generally used by the public." And the Slashdot story includes a link back to a post about a patent application IBM withdrew back in the fall of 2007 for outsourcing. The application was pulled due to an IBM policy that had been put in place to "to sharply reduce business method patent filings and instead stress significant technical content in its patents."

The Dell trademark approval and reversal could have been avoided if even one person at the USPTO had done a simple Google search for the term. As for the IBM patent? Well, that would have required some common sense. Even if the work involved in competing a 10-second conversation between cashier and customer needs to be reduced, anyone who's ever shopped in a grocery store knows that most of the time, the cashier has already starting scanning and bagging groceries by the time the customer gets to the register to hand over or scan a shopper's card.

The real kicker with the IBM patent, though? On quick shopping trips, I usually use the self-checkout lanes, and can choose what type of bags I want to use myself. And I scan my groceries on an IBM Self Checkout system.

More news, commentary, and predictions from The Industry Standard:

• Analysis: Five cloud computing questions
• News: IBM to open source supercomputing code
• News: Dell defends its 'cloud computing' trademark bid