is swirl a known "trademark"? or just "swirl with word 'Debian'"?

[Yaroslav Halchenko <debian@onerussian.com>]

NB moving this to debian-legal with hope for better closure before
   making more noise  on -project

On Mon, 12 Jan 2015, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Yaroslav Halchenko wrote: 
>         I don't think so:
>         http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:q33o33.2.1
>         "The mark consists of a spiral formed with the style of a paintbrush
>         stroke with the word "debian" written."

> And there are much simpler trademarks out there. The logo of a famous
> clothing company consists in a blue square with three characters written
> in white, in a given font. 

>         i.e. swirl on its own is not trademarked, thus could be freely used for
>         other projects

> The swirl is a trademark, regardless of your uninformed opinion on that
> topic. 

just for my own education -- could you please support your statement
with references?  

in my case I have cited the official USPTO description of the Debian
trademark.  As in your example black square without three letters
wouldn't be considered a trademark of that closing company -- why then
Debian swirl (released under the most open license and not explicitly
trademarked) is officially (not just hypothetically) an existing
trademark?  

I do not remember the case  when we (Debian/SPI) followed up on cases
where nearly exactly the same swirl was used, making "swirl is a
trademark" even weaker (without exercise, there is no strength ;) ).  Or
there were?

Cheers,
-- 
Yaroslav O. Halchenko, Ph.D.
http://neuro.debian.net http://www.pymvpa.org http://www.fail2ban.org
Research Scientist,            Psychological and Brain Sciences Dept.
Dartmouth College, 419 Moore Hall, Hinman Box 6207, Hanover, NH 03755
Phone: +1 (603) 646-9834                       Fax: +1 (603) 646-1419
WWW:   http://www.linkedin.com/in/yarik