I agree.  I will accept the ™ since anyone can do it and good luck defending it, but yeah, the ® is like, they paid good money to the gooberments, signaling that they want to control those words in the English language... And don't fall for the prior art and special words arguments. The truth is that they want the language ubiquity of Clorox/Bleach AND the rights to squash/profit from anyone who tries to use the words...