Mira Murati’s AI startup Thinking Machines valued at $12B in early-stage funding

Fascinating question! I can't find any mention of this seemingly obvious issue.

Here's[1][2] their trademark application from February, which is still "NOT ASSIGNED". Technically it's for their logotype but I imagine it's all the same issue, considering that they include "Computer hardware" in the description of their company (which is exactly what the old one did). This site ominously says that the only action since the filing date was on June 5th, titled "LETTER OF PROTEST EVIDENCE FORWARDED" -- perhaps that's Oracle?

I think this[4] is the trademark for the original's ("Thinking Machines Corporation") trademark logotype, first used in 1987 and defunct ("cancelled"?) by 1999. Another site[5] lists three other "Dead/Cancelled" trademarks owned by the original, and two more recent attempts by randos in 2006 and 2010 that were both shot down.

Technically they're "Thinking Machine Lab Inc."[3], but they're basically always referred to without the "Lab", even to the point of using thinkingmachines.ai as their domain (which, hilariously, doesn't use their trademarked logotype). Another goofy tidbit is that they also filed a trademark for a serif logotype of the words "BEEP BOOP"[6] -- maybe that's their fallback name!

Would be fascinated to hear from anyone familiar with US trademark law on what might be going on, and how we might see what the "LETTER OF PROTEST" is! My layperson understanding would definitely tell me that Oracle would maintain the trademarks, but perhaps they were forced to let them lapse due to lack of use?

I've been slowly building (y'know how it is...) a (one-man...) company filed as "Doering Thinking Machines, LLC" for a few years (named after an old family business, "Doering Machines"), so I'm quite interested to see how this shakes out!

[1] https://furm.com/trademarks/thinking-machines-99054776

[2] For the love of god, please HN gods, just make these comments markdown. IDK what battle you're fighting but it's a baffling one. The lack of blockquotes is painful, but the lack of inline links is downright diabolical! You have three people now, you can afford the effort ;)

[3] https://trademarks.justia.com/741/37/thinking-machines-74137...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Lab

[5] https://uspto.report/TM/99051772

[6] https://trademarks.justia.com/990/71/beep-99071391.html

One would imagine they already thought of that. There are at least two people at a16z old enough to know about the original TM.

"it wants to build artificial intelligence systems that are safer, more reliable and aimed at a broader number of applications than rivals".

If only I had had that idea, maybe I could have raised $2B.

Is there a word (like aphorism or metaphor) for someone trying to prove a point and doing the opposite? There just has to be.