In a previous post I wrote about CO2 Stats, a company that provides a carbon offset program for web sites.  The program calculates the carbon emissions of its subscribers’ sites and purchases renewable energy certificates to offset the emissions.

Enernetics, Inc., which owns CO2 Stats, filed a trademark application (485_app.pdf) in the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) last month for the word mark GREEN CERTIFIED SITE. 

U.S. Application Serial No. 77568485 (‘485 application) lists the goods/services as “[c]omputer certificates for verifying environmental services for Internet services and Internet devices, namely websites, email servers, e-commerce, multi-media, routers, and PCs.”

It seems likely that the PTO will at least initially reject CO2 Stats’ application as merely descriptive of the services provided, and the company will have to fight to get a registration.  This is because one can’t get a federal registration for a trademark if the mark merely describes the goods or services provided.

I subscribed to CO2 Stats and I’ve inserted the required piece of HTML code (although it seems I can only do so in a post so the above logo will not consistently appear on my web site).

Clicking on the Green Certified Site logo above verifies the offsets and provides an interesting window into the energy used and carbon emitted by the blog. 

For instance, the carbon footprint of you guys, my readers, this month is 0.0038 kg of CO2; the total server footprint is 0.0041 kg CO2.  There is also a cool pie chart showing the breakdown of the fuels powering this web site.

Thanks to CO2 Stats, Green Patent Blog will no longer contribute to global warming.

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