That's not a trademark issue, that's false advertising.

FTA: "Using these methods, the Allies deduced that the German military industrial complex churned out around 1,400 tanks each month from June 1940 through September 1942. That just didn’t seem right."

Pfft, my factory in Starcraft 2 lets me roll out at least twice that number every day.

That's still pretty scary to me, and I live no where near the UK...

Can we please please please PLEASE keep the partisan political garbage off of slashdot, this is my last sanctuary against this crap.

That Instantly went to "how will this advance the sex-toy market" instantly before thinking of good practical or scientific uses?

The non-student workers got those patent applications, I got the local townies we provided free consulting as a public service, and fellow students.

Missouri University of Science and Technology (University of Missouri Rolla when i went there)

He can still sell them, he just can't patent them. You can't patent the flat rock you found in your yard.

Only if they were stopped by someone like me, explaining to the person why they can't submit this patent. The PTO takes every application seriously which is both a wonderful and horrible thing, until it can be proven un-patentable or that it infringes on an earlier patent. This is done through a semi-long process of research that isn't always done correctly (because of the sheer magnitude of searching for similar patents or parts of similar patents).

On a side-note, I want to clarify that all of those items listed did not get formal paper-work submitted to the Patent Office. If they did they I would not be able to talk about them here or I would be in violation of my previous contract. There are a lot of ridiculous ones that went against my advice and filed anyways.

I worked in my university's patent office (we help you file the necessary paperwork to the necessary people, not a real patent office). There were so many people that tried to patent things they did not invent or were just not patentable:

-A rock you put on your BBQ grill, then cook the steaks on your hot rock.
-Converting propane tanks into makeshift bomb shelters but cutting off one side and climbing inside
-A penny jar that had engraved markings on the side to tell you how much money you had (approx) if you only put pennies in it
-A cotton ball wrapped in string that you could light on fire with lighter fluid and 'play' with

And my personal favorite:
-A handshake machine, its just a mannequin arm that moves up and down on a small motor (the drawings made it look REALLY like a handjob machine)

The average (read: non-slashdot) user doesn't care if their phone can be a portable DNS or not. Where we see 'locked-down garbage' they see 'IT PLAYS GAMES TOO!?'