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OpenAI – Application for US trademark “GPT” has failed
- neya 3y agoThankfully, finally some faith in the patent system. This was an asshole move to harass others from using the word GPT in their trade. Kind of like how Instagram did it with the word "gram".
- yau8edq12i 3y agoTrademarks are completely unrelated to patents.
- eru 3y agoOr they should be. I think in the US they are handled by the same bureaucracy called 'United States Patent and Trademark Office'?
- jacquesm 3y agoThat doesn't make them part of 'the patent system', you could overhaul the patent system without ever touching on trademark law.
- eru 3y agoLogically both systems are separate, yes. And some countries might even have separate bureaucracies for them. But the US has the same bureaucracy for both. And bureaucracies are leaky abstractions.
- jacquesm 3y agoLogically, legally and organizationally they are separate systems. There is zero indication for overlap between them to the degree that it would warrant more trust in the patent system because someone's trademark application failed.
- biot 3y agoIf some company’s alcoholic beverage doesn’t get approved, you wouldn’t say “finally some faith in the firearms system” just because the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives handles both.
- notso411 3y ago[dead]
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoThey are. I got a Registered trademark for one of my companies (®, as opposed to ™). It's a huge pain (and pretty much requires lawyers, but you can do it yourself, if you are a masochist), and, in retrospect, not worth it. I suspect that why most companies use ™.
- eru 3y agoWhat extra benefits do you get?
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoBasically, the only real benefit, and that can be significant, is that it greatly strengthens your case, if going after copiers.
- sanxiyn 3y agoWell, yes, but in the US USPTO is responsible for both trademarks and patents.
- littlestymaar 3y agoThey are different but not completely unrelated either. They are both parts of industrial property.
- eru 3y agoDid you mean intellectual property?
- littlestymaar 3y agoNope, even though industrial property is itself one of the two sides of intellectual property (the other being copyright).
- eru 3y agoThanks, I hadn't come across the term before. For other people who haven't, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_property https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_property
- vmfunction 3y agoyeah, but in US, both are in the same office: USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office)
- yau8edq12i 3y agoAnd another office handles tobacco and explosives. US administration is full of historical cruft. What's your point?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- whatsthatabout 3y agoIt's really honorable that OpenAI keeps their promise of bringing open-source AI to the people! /s
- jadayesnaamsi 3y agoGreat. I hope they find a real name to their product, that would not be an acronym. We can critic Google as much as we want, but at least it's a bit less weird to say "Hey Gemini" compared to "Hey GPT", when you know that GPT is actually something between an abstract concept and a code implementation.
- HPsquared 3y agoIn principle an acronym (initialism really) can be an original name, e.g. IBM, BMW. This is common. This trademark seems to have been denied because it's not "original" enough. It's too generic a term.
- block_dagger 3y agoCompany name vs product name
- eru 3y agoIn this example, the company is called Bayerische Motoren Werke AG. BMW is one of their trademarks. See also how there's a company named 'Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG' with a brand called 'Porsche'. But nowadays that company is just a subsidiary of Volkswagen, and they could restructure to make the Porsche AG disappear, without doing any changes to the brand.
- ben_w 3y ago> Volkswagen Also, this is literally "people's car".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thaumasiotes 3y agoAnd BMW is literally "Bavarian motor works". It's fun to know, but so what?
- jug 3y agoGood. It's like a company in biomedicine trying to trademark "RNA". I dislike how OpenAI are trying to hijack a term to describe a kind of language model for their products and cringed when they introduced "GPTs" and "Making your own GPT". I see what you're trying to do, OpenAI... So, after a quick glance here -- OpenAI argued that a consumer may not realize this and what GPT means, trying to use this as a defense for hijacking the term for use in their product portfolio, but the attorney thankfully didn't find the argument very convincing due to vast and established Internet evidence. He also pointed out that it doesn't even matter if a user doesn't know specifically what the acronym "GPT" exactly means, and that it's enough that the general connection to AI and Q&A technology has already been established.
- larodi 3y agoNext they try to copyright CHAT perhaps. Indeed very irritating.
- EGreg 3y agoHow did Microsoft trademark Windows? When computer windows existed?
- stavros 3y agoPresumably because "windows" wasn't a term used to describe an OS. They didn't trademark "OS".
- blagie 3y agoWindows didn't start out as an OS. It started out as a windowing system for DOS. That's the landscape all the trademark suits happened in. Footnote: Windows 95/98/ME was still DOS + Windows bundled in one box. Windows XP was the first consumer operating system derived from Windows NT (which was in fact a proper operating system in its own right). Even Windows NT was trademark-iffy. It was a play on VMS (get it? If not, increment each letter).
- manojlds 3y agoNoob question - how is someone able to trademark Apple but not GPT?
- HPsquared 3y agoThis case would be like an apple company selling apples trying to trademark the word "apple".
- eru 3y agoSee also Apple (the music company) vs Apple Computer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
- threeseed 3y agoTrademarks are localised to specific industries. So I can apply for a trademark for Apple Cleaners or Apple Tax Accountant just not Apple Computers.
- dontupvoteme 3y agoHere's a dumb question - If the sent date is Feb06, why are we hearing of this slightly over a week later?
- unreal37 3y agoWhat was your expectation? Would it be slower for the government to update its website with email correspondence? Or faster? A week seems... normal.
- dontupvoteme 3y agoI thought it would be a top story is all.
- petercooper 3y agoI go through most links submitted to this site and you'd be surprised just how much relevant or otherwise interesting stuff doesn't make the front page. You could quite easily start an alternative HN variant populated solely with items that don't make it.
- bagels 3y agoIt wasn't put on the website till now, or nobody saw it till now, or nobody posted it here till now?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- klausa 3y agoIt was posted on HN sooner, just didn't get traction. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=gpt%20trademark&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- pwdisswordfishc 3y agoUEFI Forum exhaled in relief.
- IceHegel 3y agoThe typesetting is giving me a headache wish they had used latex.
- olalonde 3y agoI don't understand why they thought it was a good idea to use an obscure academic acronym for customer facing products. I guess they didn't expect their "API demo" to blow up the way it did and are now stuck with the name.
- imiric 3y agoChatGPT is not really a customer facing product. It's a crude interface over an LLM, directed more towards developers and tech enthusiasts who will use it to create customer facing products, rather than towards the general public. It only exploded in popularity because of its novelty, but it's far from being generally accessible or useful.
- olalonde 3y agoI know that was the initial plan, hence why I referred to it as an "API demo", but they now reportedly have hundreds of million active users.
- pooper 3y agoChatGPT is still the only (free of cost? haven't tried anything paid) chat assistant things that allow me to have a conversation in that I push a button and then it keeps listening. I say something it replies and goes back to listening mode without me having to press a button.
- mousetree 3y agoMy grandmother uses ChatGPT
- hparadiz 3y agoI've been generating images with stable diffusion in the hopes of creating a snowboard design using my own personal computer and the results so far are actually incredible. And we're still in early days. Setting up a text only LLM is just as trivial. And frankly better cause you can train it for yourself and tag out a model and save it.
- hawski 3y ago
- dudeinjapan 3y agoPhew! My Gay Panda Therapy business is safe… for now.
- 1f60c 3y agoAs someone who is both a paid customer of ChatGPT Plus and the API (in other words, a loyal customer), I'm glad to see this. While companies can and should do better than name everything CompanyGPT, this sends a clear message that OpenAI doesn't own the concept of GPTs, even if it's a meaningless string of letters to most people.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y agoGood because GPT was a terrible brand. I don’t mean as in “oh no they use a term”. I mean as in its a very obscure term for most. There are way better names to come up with. And “GPTs” is even worse as a way to express “customizable prompts and knowledge files”.
- cientifico 3y agoI find it surprising how quickly we rush to pass judgment on OpenAI's actions without understanding the motivations behind their attempt to trademark. It's possible that they are seeking protection against others who might register the same, or it could be a measure to prevent customers from unknowingly sharing sensitive company data with a GPT indexer unrelated to OpenAI. If anyone has evidence of OpenAI acting in bad faith, please share it.
- matsemann 3y agoIf they're worried about people confusing their service with others, shouldn't they then just choose a different name than the tech it's built on? I don't see MySQL or others being afraid of them being confused with other databases.
- rerdavies 3y agoMyGPT is almost definitely trademarkable. (Although MySQL might sue).
- buildfocus 3y agoI don't think the debate here is about motivation - the concern is that in itself, regardless of the reasons, attempting to trademark a generic technical term is bad behaviour.
- stavros 3y agoI have evidence of them acting in bad faith: They're trying to trademark a generic term.
- rightbyte 3y agoThis "they have to do bad thing or someone else might" excuse is not working out anymore for me.
- scaryclam 3y agoGiven how they characterise GPTs in general as custom versions of chatGPT (https://openai.com/blog/introducing-gpts https://openai.com/blog/introducing-gpts), I don't think it's a stretch to assume they're not being very benevolent in this trademark attempt. You should also be asking for evidence that they are acting in good faith, if you're interested in determining their actual motivations.
- DeathArrow 3y agoLet's trademark all words in dictionary and all 3 letters combinations.
- rerdavies 3y agoNo need to trademark all 3 letter combinations, because all three letter acronyms have already been purchased by DNS squatters. It would be crazy to choose a name for a company or product for which you can't get the domain name.
- seydor 3y agoGood they need to find a better name anyway. Also how about changing their own name to closedAI
- _giorgio_ 3y agoPlease remember that Sam uses only lowercase letters. So it needs to be one word only, or use "-_", like closed_ai, really-closed-ai, agi-and-i
- matwood 3y ago_ would lose the efficiencies gained by avoiding the shift key so only - can be used
- Havoc 3y agoI have colleagues that capitalise by toggling caps lock on and then off again so the efficiency gains might be real for them lol
- matwood 3y agoI used to work with a good programmer who hunt and pecked using his index fingers. I thought it was funny, but it drove the vim guy in the office nuts.
- sbarre 3y agoI refer to myself as a "six and a half finger typist" because I never did learn proper touch typing, but I can still type faster than most people. I do use the Backspace key a lot though. :-)
- illusive4080 3y agoMainframe programmer probably
- lobsterthief 3y ago
- lkadjal 3y ago[dead]
- lagt_t 3y agoRare patent office win
- brikym 3y agoI guess they have to settle for plan B: Chad Gipitty
- _giorgio_ 3y agoThe primary issue is that the OpenAI name lacks appeal. Moreover, it harbors a cringe-worthy idiosyncrasy, given that there's nothing 'open' about OpenAI.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y agoI guarantee you that over 99% of OpenAI’s paying user base do not give a hoot about this “open AI” thing. It literally doesn’t matter outside of people whining on Hacker News and Twitter. I’d eat my hat if it was the deciding factor for ONE person choosing whether or not to use an OpenAI product. If this is a big issue for you, you’re probably opposed to closed-source models in general. Open sounds like a fancy computer word, and AI is….literally AI, two letters people are very excited about. I very much doubt that OpenAI has a branding problem.
- _giorgio_ 3y agoIt sounds like a meme name the moment you know how OpenAI started. I use and pay for their products and I find them absolutely great. I'm obviously opposed to closed source models and knowledge for AI because I've seen how important was the GPT paper by Google. You're making judgments and assumptions and that is quite annoying.
- kyleyeats 3y agoCan they get "grok" and "meta" back too? I really miss new words.
- zogrodea 3y agoGPT had previously been used as an acronym for market-research websites like Amazon MTurk (participants Get Paid To fill surverys) before the LLM craze so it does seem like a bad trademark.
- mijoharas 3y agoI believe trademarks are usually scoped to a specific usecase, so it's possible that wouldn't be infringing if the trademark were granted.
- zogrodea 3y agoI didn't know that. Thanks for the information. I think Apple's trademark lawsuit against a.pl (Polish grocery site) [0] failed for that reason, so it seems good that the concept looks like it's limited to specific fields. https://www.pcworld.com/article/461258/apple_vs_a_pl_tech_company_sues_online_polish_grocer_over_logo.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/461258/apple_vs_a_pl_tech_co...
- hansonpeter 3y ago[dead]
- LoveMortuus 3y agoThere are so many example of trademark abuse... Like Monster Energy SLAPPing anyone who uses the word Monster [0: search for 'monster energy sues', there's too many to pick a single one]. Or King trying to SLAPP The Banner Saga for using the word Saga [1]. Or Bethesda SLAPPing Mojang for "Scrolls" [2]. I'm probably missing a ton more of these, but to be fair, it is quite easy to mistake these with copyrights issues, because it's usually the same companies that abuse that system as well. I'm not certain if these are SLAPP, but I do like the sound of the acronym. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/slapp_suit https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/slapp_suit] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/01/23/candy-crush-saga-tries-to-crush-the-banner-saga-in-bizarre-trademark-saga/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/01/23/candy-crush... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/03/16/bethesda-and-mojang-settle-scrolls-lawsuit/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/03/16/bethesda-a...
- jtbayly 3y agoOr Monster Cables...
- blackshaw 3y agoEntrepreneur magazine are famous for this too.
- alephaleph 3y agoThe defining feature of a SLAPP is that it is a means of shutting up critics — not just any frivolous lawsuit is a SLAPP.
- armcat 3y agoI went a bit meta on this and supplied the trademark report to ChatGPT, prompting it to summarize. It did so as follows: The US Trademark Office rejected the application, deeming "GPT" merely descriptive of the features, functions, or characteristics of OpenAI's goods and services. The decision was based on extensive evidence showing "GPT" is widely used in the industry to refer to a specific type of AI technology, making it not distinctive enough for trademark protection under the Trademark Act Section 2(e)(1). Additionally, OpenAI's application was partially refused for Class 09 due to unacceptable specimens, as they did not demonstrate the mark's use in commerce in a manner that allows for the downloading or purchasing of the software. Also: I understand the trademark decision but does OpenAI have any patents on GPT? Google has for example patented word2vec, https://patents.google.com/patent/US9037464B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US9037464B1/en
- screenothethird 3y ago[dead]
- tolleydbg 3y agoI don't keep up with the AI space at all, but have they become victims of trademark confusion, a la Kleenex?
- lolinder 3y agoNo, the primary reason given for rejection is that the term is merely descriptive—GPT just refers to a transformer that was trained with generative pre-training. The examining attorney gave a bunch of examples of GPT being used to describe a type of AI system. So it's not that the trademark has been diluted (although the attorney included a warning that even if the trademarks weren't descriptive it's also become generic), the problem is that it would never have been an acceptable trademark because trademark law doesn't allow you to trademark a description of a product that would apply equally well to your competitors' products.
- visarga 3y agoWondering what's the plan when they transition to Mamba or state space models. Still call them GPT, but without the T? GP*
- roydivision 3y agoDefinition of GTP - Generative pre-trained transformer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_pre-trained_transformer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_pre-trained_transfo...
- joemckenna 3y agoLeading up to ChatGPT, virtually no model innovation was needed. Just some minor tweaks to activation functions and the order in which operations were completed in the feedfoward layers. So they were essentially trying to trademark the innovation published openly in Attention is All You Need?
- JCM9 3y agoThis was an open and shut case and OpenAI was either delusional or just being arrogant in thinking they would get this trademark. The PTO is simply applying the law. You can’t trademark something in common use like this.
- shagie 3y agoConsider the mess if they didn't attempt to get it, and a trademark troll (yes, they do exist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_troll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_troll ) was able to get the trademark and sued everyone. Should OpenAI get a trademark for GPT? No. Should anyone else? No. How do you prevent someone else from trying to get the trademark for GPT? Try to get it yourself if you've got a word used with a product name. At worst following this, you get denied - like OpenAI was for GPT. But this is better than the worst worst case where you don't try and someone else gets it and sues you for trademark infringement (and wins? forces you to rebrand?).
- DonHopkins 3y agoNow do GOFAI "Frame"! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_(artificial_intelligence) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_(artificial_intelligence...
- AlphaJack 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table
- gorjusborg 3y agoNow that's a GPT to remember.
- Croline79 3y ago[flagged]
- Mo3 3y agoReally? On hacker news?
- xyst 3y agoI guess OpenAI lawyers don’t have the same connections at Meta lawyers as USPTO
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tartrate 3y agoThey've come a long way from being open to claiming exclusive rights to use a scientific term. Wow.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] Bit more discussion last week, probably should have updated the URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39322046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39322046
- _chu1 3y agoThat would literally be the same as Microsoft trying to trademark the "-soft" suffix. Can't wait for OpenAI to make more wacky decisions over time.
- usrusr 3y agoI'd say it's somewhere between the -soft hypothetical and landgrabs like T-anything that have been tried in reality. Of course the real question we all want to see answered is did they dogfood the trademark application documents?
- m3kw9 3y agoGood, it was an az move
- canjobear 3y agoThis seems reasonable because GPT has already been used to name models that were not developed by OpenAI, like GPT-J and GPT-Neo.
- napierzaza 3y ago[dead]
- 0xPMW 3y agoI was rejected by the App Store a few months ago because I named my app {AppName}GPT for use of a "registered" trademark. I got through their review process with my first few versions, but on my third update they rejected. Ultimately, I decided on a name change and it's yielded better results for ASO anyways.
- amelius 3y agoUnrelated but is "App Store" actually trademarked?
- matchagaucho 3y agoThose claims are quite a land grab. If on appeal they focused solely on their "Explore GPTs" store, I wonder if the USPTO would be more lenient?
- rkagerer 3y agoWhy the word "failed" instead of "refused" (or "rejected")?
- udev4096 3y agoLooks a lot less embarrassing right?
- 4b11b4 3y agoI mean the first two words are general purpose...
- simple10 3y agoThis is good the trademark failed. It might have been more of a defensive move rather than trying to lock up the term for OpenAI's exclusive use. Although, I'm sure they would have been happy if it succeeded. Question for a lawyer, but in my experience it's common for companies to file trademarks with the expectation they'll lose. This creates a precedence for others trying to file similar trademarks and clears the way for the company to continue using the non-trademarked term without fear of future lawsuit.