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OpenAI's GPT Trademark Request Has Been Denied (tsdr.uspto.gov)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

First, applicant argues that the mark is not merely descriptive because consumers will not immediately understand what the underlying wording "generative pre-trained transformer" means. The trademark examining attorney is not convinced. The previously and presently attached Internet evidence demonstrates the extensive and pervasive use in applicant's software industry of the acronym "GPT" in connection with software that features similar AI technology with ask and answer functions based on pre-trained data sets; the fact that consumers may not know the underlying words of the acronym does not alter the fact that relevant purchasers are adapted to recognizing that the term "GPT" is commonly used in connection with software to identify a particular type of software that features this AI ask and answer technology. Accordingly, this argument is not persuasive.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (9 children)

Putting aside the merits of trying to trademark gpt, which like the examiner says is commonly used term for a specific type of AI (there are other open source "gpt" models that have nothing to do with OpenAI), I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate how incredibly bad OpenAI is at naming things. Google has Bard and now Gemini.Microsoft has copilot. Anthropic has Claude (which does sound like the name of an idiot, so not a great example). Voice assistants were Google Assistant, Alexa, seri, and Bixby.

Then openai is like ChatGPT. Rolls right off the tounge, so easy to remember, definitely feels like a personable assistant. And then they follow that up with custom "GPTs", which is not only an unfriendly name, but also confusing. If I try to use ChatGPT to help me make a GPT it gets confused and we end up in a "who's on first" style standoff. I've reported to just forcing ChatGPT to do a websearch for "custom GPT" so I don't have to explain the concept to it each time.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 9 months ago (4 children)

It's like calling a laptop "Laptop v3.5". They decided to name their product on the literal technology they use which was just a bad idea from the start, and is still causing confusion to this day when open source models are also called GPT.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

So... iPhone?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago

iPhone is like ChatGPT. But trying to trademark GPT would be like trademarking "Phone"

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

iPhone is a bit different. Rather than just being the object name, they incorporated said object name into their naming style. OpenAI were trying to trademark GPT - the literal name of the technology they were using.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Like trying to trademark “CellPhone”!

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