I'm aware of that article. My comment doesn't really pertain to trademarks, but I think my comment pertains equally well to copyright and patent laws. While it may be true that US law treats them differently, they are fundamentally the same thing—a mechanism to reward work that results in ideas, not tangible objects—and it often makes sense to discuss them at the same time, especially when we're broadly discussing how they should be handled as opposed to to the specifics of how US law handles them now.