Being Green has become so hot that it's lead to "green gridlock, with multiple companies filing for almost-identical marks at nearly the same time," wrote Glenn Gundersen, chair of Dechert's trademark practice, in the report. "Clearly, it's not easy being green, since a trademark by definition is a distinctive term. ... Many of these me-too filings will either not merit legal protection or will be very weak trademarks."

In 2006, green themed marks spiked by 10% in trademark filings topping 300,000. Applications ranged from the obvious terms, such as go green, eco-friendly to the obscure such as ("Green Is the New Black," "Red States, Blue States, Green States". 

PrimePoint Media has established a program that provides Eco-Bins in cities such as New York, Detroit, Dallas, Atlanta, Baltimore and Key West. The Eco-Bins allow advertisers to place messages on both the front and back panels of the bins. The program has received sponsorship from Best Buy, UPS, Western Union and Whole Foods.  Currently there are are 300 bins available with 1200 advertising spaces.  

The term green is synonymous with the environment and helping the environment but Microsoft's new campaign, "Get Green, Stay Green" is not tied to being green at all. The marketing campaign is for their Windows Live OneCare protection suite.

Catchword Branding recently compiled statistics on Green names and found some interesting trends. It seems that everyone wants to use the word "green" to describe themselves so much, that trademark filings that incorporated the word "green" jumped 143% between 2006 and 2007 where as the trademark filings for "red" and "blue increased 5% during the same time period. Other names that have become more popular include "eco" and "earth" - they almost doubled in usage, where as words such as "nature", "natural", and "pure" increased in demand by 20%.