I love the irony of Petzl having a problem with trademark law just as we're having these twin furors over copyright and patent laws. Oh, the wonders of intellectual property law. Anyway, just keep in mind that "intellectual property" is a fake thing, it is the superposition of three distinct classes, as follows.

* Patents cover inventions and systems. They hope to prevent trade secret, thus making public knowledge disadvantageous to publish, by granting temporary global monopolies on physical mechanisms.

* Copyright covers creative works. It hopes to prevent art from being un-monetizeable and thus expensive to create, by granting temporary localized monopolies on creative works.

* Trademarks cover identity and brand. It hopes to prevent "brand dilution" (some sort of passive libel, might we say?), thus making trust-based business difficult; it does this by granting infinite namespaced monopoly on symbols and marks.

Patents and Copyrights are temporary: they exist only for a specified period (20 and 100 years are good approximate figures, but the rules are complex) after which the monopoly disappears; trademarks are infinite: they must be renewed (yearly?) but can be indefinitely.

Patents are global: once one is granted, independent discovery is not a defence (though it may help prove that the patent was obvious and thus shouldn't've been granted); copyright is local: once one is granted, independent discover is a defence (though the greater the independent discovery, the more suspicious the claim); trademarks are namespaced: independent discovery and use valid if it "doesn't cause confusion", that is, if the entities trademarked don't do similar-enough things that someone might mean one and get the other.

Thus a (hypothetical) patent on linked lists would make it illegal to use linked lists anywhere, anytime until it ran out, for any reason, and with any (obvious-enough) implementation. One could not patent a poem specifically, though one could (concievably) patent a mechanism of constructing them. One could not patent the Apple logo, though one could concievably patent a particular way of drawing it, or the technique by which plastic is molded in its shape (if this method is sufficiently novel).

One could not copyright a linked list, though one could patent the contents of its cells, and one could copyright the use of a linked list if this itself presented a creative contribution (perhaps a linked list of versions of MS Windows, where linkage underscores the fact that one was based on another). One could copyright a poem, and in fact any creativity-baren modifications (fixing typos, rendering in HTML, a program that prints the poem), though not creativity-requiring modifications (rendering to music, translations, or a literary criticism of it) (all of these might be more or less tenuous depending on exact circumstances). One could copyright the Apple logo, but only if you could argue that its precise configuration is an artistic work, and this would have to be done for every specific variant every: if I made an outline of the logo and filled it in with a cutout of Jobs's face, that would not be covered.

One could not trademark a linked list, unless the linked list was a trademark of my particular trademark or brand; with a lot of twisting the law, one might imagine Lisp trademarking the use of linked lists everywhere, but this wouldn't apply to programs, just other programming langauges (and of course, this is pretty nebulous, trademarks are actually supposed to be quite concrete). One could trademark a poem, if this poem was the canonical definition of your identity, but it'd have to be a short poem, since long poems are too long to read to just be an identity, and it'd only apply to that entity in its field: a plumber, a physicist, and a computer company could all have the same poem as their trademark. Finally, you'd trademark the Apple logo since it is the core symbolic identity of Apple.

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So for the issue at hand, Petzl could be concerned about three things. First: someone could be stealing exactly how the mechanism of carabiners, headlamps, and life safety equipment and building atop this idea without paying Petzl due credit. That would be hurting Petzl by removing its competitive advantage it gained from discovering new types of safety equipment. For example, Paul Petzl has patent 5357657 on carabiners; he should be rewarded for discovering the idea and telling the world about it. That patent still has 2 years of life (by my guess), so Petzl might be concerned. But that's not the issue they're bringing up here.

Second: someone could be copying the exact design of their carabiners, something they might consider an artistic form, and copying this art to other people without forcing them to pay Petzl for the privilage. That would make it more expensive for them to produce similar art in the future. However, they might be hard-pressed to argue that the artistic merit of carabiners and similar are what they sell. This is also not the issue Petzl is concerned about here.

Third: someone might be making things that claim to be Petzl things, but aren't, and be thus both stealing Petzl costumers (illigitimately growing his business by hurting customers) and be hurting Petzl by producing inferior product or support, reducing trust in Petzl the entity. This would hurt customers by making trust-based business hard to do, and make it hard for Petzl to pride itself on anything but prices, since everything else it sells (quality, support, practices) rely on being able to identity Petzl products. This is what Petzl is concerned about here.

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SOPA (by my knowledge) mostly deals with reforming copyright law, not patent or trademark law. Thus it would do nothing for Petzl (beyond doing the evil we suspect it will to everyone).

Finally, I've always loved Petzl gear (I have use for a good headlamp, and really, who doesn't?), and this is yet another reason for me to support them. Not that they take the default position, but by taking the time to check and publicly state that their "support" was a mistruth at best, a lie at worst.