"Obama bin Laden" trademark rejected

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected a Miami Beach man's application to trademark the name "Obama bin Laden" because the name "may falsely suggest a connection with the individuals Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama," USPTO lawyer Karen Bush said in a Feb. 6 rejection letter, the Miami Herald reported this week.

You can't get a trademark for "immoral or scandalous matter," Bush said.

The applicant, Alexandre Batlle, sells coffee mugs, T-shirts, hats and such. One has a cartoon of presidential candidates Obama — in a robe and turban and holding a machine gun — and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., in an Arab caftan.

Clinton foes aim to make film

WASHINGTON — A veteran conservative activist and Bill Clinton's former political adviser are trying to raise $3.5 million to produce a movie critical of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, aiming its release for October or November — ahead of the 2008 presidential caucuses and primaries.

Dave Bossie, who during the 2004 campaign produced "Celsius: 41.11," a feature-length response to liberal filmmaker Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," is teaming with Dick Morris, who advised former President Clinton on and off from the late 1970s to 1996.

Bossie said their movie will "educate the American people about Hillary Clinton."

Critics say Bossie and Morris are collaborating on a "swift-boating" attack — reference to a documentary on 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry by Vietnam veterans calling themselves the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer said of the Bossie-Morris project. "We're not going to allow anyone to get away with smearing Sen. Clinton or misrepresenting her record."

Also

Raising money: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson raised at least $2 million for his presidential campaign Thursday at a New Mexico resort fundraiser for almost 1,000 people

Campaign snag: Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Biden's first trip to Iowa as a 2008 presidential candidate hit snags Friday. A Senate vote today on a resolution objecting to President Bush's strategy to send more troops to Iraq forced him to abandon events in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. Bad weather then slowed his private flight Friday from Washington, D.C., to Iowa, forcing him to scrub a town-hall meeting at the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown.

Seattle Times new services