Actually, Egan, eighteen months for a first response on a trademark application in the USPTO is not at all unusual and is no indication that the Office actually DELIBERATED on the validity of the application for the entire time. Rather, it probably just came to the top of the stack and received the standard rejection that all generic and descriptive marks receive. Dell now has the opportunity to respond with evidence that the mark has acquired secondary meaning with respect to its computing products, a pretty tough road in this case. More likely than not, Dell will probably combine the mark with its corporate name or some other word and or design that are clearly open to trademark and the, once the combination mark has been in use for some time, backtrack and try to sever it later in the hope that it can prove secondary meaning at that time through the extensive use of the combined mark.

Given the track record of the USPTO, it's astonishing that it DIDN'T go though!