Whoa! I'm not sure how the government telling OTHER people what they can't do is YOUR private property. There are lots of items that can be used to debate the

Whoa! I'm not sure how the government telling OTHER people what they can't do is YOUR private property. There are lots of items that can be used to debate the for/against of the topic: Free Speech vs the government protecting hate speech, if protecting is the same as promoting, the role of government enforcement in commerce, etc. but I can't see "property". In fact, unlike copyrights, the point of trademark is to prevent consumer confusion. It's not something granted to your for YOUR benefit, but rather for the benefit of consumers. Someone can trademark the same name in a different (but potentially related field) if there is no consumer confusion. Likewise, a trademark in an unrelated field can be denied or ruled invalid if it is shown that there IS consumer confusion. (example: Sleep Inns were original McSleep Inns, until McDonalds (the food manufacturer) shut that down. (http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/19/us/mcsleep-loses-to-big-mc.html http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/19/us/mcsleep-loses-to-big-mc... - That article is thin, but my understanding is that McDonalds actually used polling to help prove that it was confusing, but that might have been a different case.). You can BENEFIT from this (by marketing your product to build a brand with a positive reputation), but a govt rule that benefits you is not the same as that rule being your property. > If the government can arbitrarily chose which private property it will enforce, you open up the possibility of rife corruption. I'd drop "arbitrarily" from this statement, as it seems a bit circular. The decisions aren't "arbitrary" - the line of what is and isn't "hate speech" is subjective and fuzzy, but almost all of the law boils down to a subjective fuzzy line (the "reasonable person" argument). Unless you're saying that corruption will MAKE it arbitrary, at which point it's not the arbitrariness that makes it potentially corrupt, but the corruption that could make it arbitrary. Drop the "arbitrarily" and I think the statement is fine, even agree with it (though I don't consider trademarks to be property).