@walconst,

Yes, both "POET" and "Powered by POET" received a "NON-FINAL ACTION" notification. The current status is listed as follows:

"A non-final Office action has been sent (issued) to the applicant. This is a letter from the examining attorney requiring additional information and/or making an initial refusal. The applicant must respond to this Office action. To view all documents in this file, click on the Trademark Document Retrieval link at the top of this page."

This sounds scary, but after I found these trademark applications I did quite a bit of digging and I noticed that about half of the sample of trademarks I read had issues resulting in the non-final action. It also seemed the more common-sounding, or ambiguous the trademark, the more likely to receive such a notice.

For example, "Reference Control Technology" could be about anything, and it has had 2 non-final action notices:

http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86410738&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

Another one I can't believe was approved (eventually) was simply and "X"

http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86410740&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

Another one called "RESVERACHRON" (for nutritional supplement) couldn't possibly have a similar sounding product in existence and it did not get a notice.

http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86410741&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

This is all anecdotal of course and it's possible it has nothing to do with the obscurity of the mark, but with POET being so common a word (there have since been 27 applications after "Powered by POET" was filed that have "poet" in the mark) I think it's possible that the scope of the business might have to be more clearly defined.