Not picking on you Cali, but I'm going to use this to drop a quick crash course on IP symbols and the difference between copyright and trademark because everyone gets it wrong.Why even use the "osu". Let's just call them "THE©".
© = copyright = "an original work of authorship" fixed in a "tangible medium" for which some degree of creativity is required. Books, articles, recordings, etc. A single word or phrase cannot be copyrighted, as a matter of law.
™ = unregistered trademark
® = registered trademark (preferred b/c you can collect statutory money damages)
Trademarks are signs and symbols, which can be words, representing companies or products.
So "THE" could be a registered trademark, in theory at least, but it could never by copyrighted.
The PTO shot it down for different reasons but the hurdle to trademarking "THE" (beyond tOSU's flawed application) is that the term is so broad and common as to be meaningless as a signifier of anything except what it otherwise is: an article. So a successful trademark application would have to show its use as highly contextual and specific, so that the public can immediately associate it with tOSU as distinguishable from "the" as an article.