A new battle is beginning in branding for the Web

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: To marketers large and small, the Web is a wide open frontier, an unlimited billboard with boundless branding opportunities. For the empirical proof, look at the filings with the government for new trademarks that, put simply, are brand names. Applications surged in the dot-com years, peaking in 2000 and then falling sharply for two years, before rising to a record last year of more than 394,000.

Recently, a new front has opened in the Internet branding wars. It lies beyond putting trademarks on new businesses, Website addresses and online logos.

Now, companies want to slap a brand on still vaguely defined products and services in the uncharted ephemera of cyberspace—the computing cloud, as it has come to be known.

Cloud computing usually refers to Internet services or software that the user accesses through a Web browser on a personal computer, cellphone or other device. The digital service is delivered remotely, from somewhere off in the computing cloud, in the fashion of Google’s Internet search service.

Dell has tried to trademark the term cloud computing itself. But in August, the US Patent and Trademark Office sent a strong signal that cloud computing cannot be trademarked.

It issued an initial refusal to Dell, which filed its application 18 months ago, when the term was less widely used in industry conversations and marketing.

Dell had passed early steps toward approval, but the office turned it down, after protests from industry experts that cloud computing had become a broadly descriptive term, and not one linked to a single company. Dell can appeal, but that seems unlikely.

In recent years, patents—not trademarks—have been the main focus of intellectual property experts and the courts, especially around the issue of whether patents on software and business methods have become counterproductive, inhibiting innovation.

But some legal experts say trademark issues may take on a higher profile, fueled by the escalating value of brands in general and trademark holders increasingly trying to assert their rights, especially on the Internet.

“Trademark is the sleeping giant of intellectual property,” said Paul Goldstein, a professor at the Stanford law school.

Microsoft, for example, is developing a technology that is intended to synchronise the data on all of a person’s computing devices, even synchronising it with family members and work colleagues as well, automatically reaching across the cloud.