On June 21, lawyers for Microsoft filed an application to trademark a stylish, logolike version of the term ".net." Big deal? You bet. The following morning, the software giant unveiled its new .NET strategy, a "next generation Internet experience" that Bill Gates described as a bet-the-company plan to reinvent the way Microsoft does business. Analysts immediately hailed .NET as Microsoft's most important announcement in years.

Amid the hoopla, Microsoft's trademark application went completely unnoticed by the pundits. That's no surprise, as Trademark tends to be the ignored "middle child" of intellectual property (IP) protection. Trademark's little brother, Copyright, gets all the empathy because he's getting beat up on the Internet by services like Napster.Meanwhile, Patent, the big sibling of the IP family, is stirring up controversies over genetics and online business models.Yet Trademark is often the most successful of the three-quicker than Patent and more powerful than Copyright.