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OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

dpa-international.com

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Re: OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

#51

Post by bryanrasmussen »

joshuat wrote: post #12
zkmon wrote: post #2

Someone finally asks some sensible questions, about hijacking of the term "open".

Preventing companies named [adjective]+[product/service provided] doesn't seem sustainable.

They haven't prevented that. They have prevented trademarking the terms, thus other people whose AI offerings are Open are in fact allowed to describe their products as an Open AI, I presume they are not allowed to describe their products as being OpenAI however as that would create consumer confusion.

Furthermore they have not said anything about [adjective] being non trademarkable, they have said that you shouldn't be able to trademark things that have specific meaning in your industry, as Open has some specific meaning in the software industry.

Thus you would probably be allowed to name your things [big] +[proudct/service provided] or in this case bigAI because big does not really imply a specific desirable quality in the Software industry.

Now before you start talking of how you can see blah blah how big would be useful blah blah, as is the tradition whenever programmers encounter a legal decision that they do not agree with, it just ain't gonna work. I guess though I cannot prevent the inevitable, but nobody in IT says does it have the technical quality of "bigness" before purchasing, but they do about the quality of "Openness", so obviously some adjectives would be untrademarkable in this context, if you named your AI SecureAI probably no go, If you named your AI UglyAssAI probably fine.

Re: OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

#52

Post by seanhunter »

slibhb wrote: post #28
Chu4eeno wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought you were joking, but that seemingly was the argument.

The argument doesn't hinge on whether OpenAI is actually open. Rather it seems to have to do with the name being insufficiently distinguishable from a generic term ("open AI"). I think it's a bizarre ruling given that everyone already knows what OpenAI is.

Trademark law isn't about what "everyone already knows". It's about whether a given mark meets the criteria for legal protection in a give context. So if say an foss ML project described what they do as "open AI" the company known as OpenAI would have a right to defend the mark. This is saying they could not.

Re: OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

#53

Post by a012 »

Retric wrote: post #20
joshuat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preventing companies named [adjective]+[product/service provided] doesn't seem sustainable.

Companies can be named after random nonsense, ‘pink catfish’ could easily be the world’s #1 supplier of firearms and nobody would find it strange. Caterpillar, Apple, Kellogg, etc really don’t have anything to do with the underlying product but neither do people’s names.

And they went out of their way to sue anyone that dare to use the cat word in the name or anything resembling an apple in the logo.

Re: OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

#54

Post by sebastiennight »

n6242 wrote: post #35
slibhb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me a break. Apple doesn't sell apples.

Exactly. Apple can register Apple because they don't sell apples so it's not misleading. OpenAI can't register OpenAI because they make ai but it's not open. They could call themselves Peaches, OpenWombat or ClosedAI and there wouldn't be any issues because those wouldn't be misleading.

> OpenAI can't register OpenAI because they make ai but it's not open

That's not the reason they can't. They can't register the trademark because it's a descriptive one.

If I try to trademark "hacker forum", an EU trademark officer will reject it not because my website doesn't have hackers on it, but because it's descriptive and prevents others from starting hacker forums.

So

> They could call themselves... ClosedAI

is also incorrect, because it's descriptive as well.

Re: OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

#55

Post by 7bit »

Legend2440 wrote: post #23
7bit wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It will harm consumers" Ah yes, chosing a name that transports openness and transparency when the opposite is the case, and complaining about not being able to register that name as a trademark, which will cause financial harm the said company -- but somehow there's still people to spin it the other way around so it harms consumers now, therefore it was a bad decision. That's the definition of anti-consumer behavior

You just don't like OpenAI and are for anything that hurts them, without thinking through the consequences. What will harm consumers is the scammy "OpenAI" chat app that I can now legally upload to app stores in the EU, in hopes of tricking people into thinking it's a genuine app.

I use OpenAI. I just am against anti-consumer behaviour

Re: OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

#56

Post by helsinkiandrew »

n6242 wrote: post #35
slibhb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me a break. Apple doesn't sell apples.

Exactly. Apple can register Apple because they don't sell apples so it's not misleading. OpenAI can't register OpenAI because they make ai but it's not open. They could call themselves Peaches, OpenWombat or ClosedAI and there wouldn't be any issues because those wouldn't be misleading.

[dead]

Re: OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

#57

Post by sardukardboard »

slibhb wrote: post #28
Chu4eeno wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought you were joking, but that seemingly was the argument.

The argument doesn't hinge on whether OpenAI is actually open. Rather it seems to have to do with the name being insufficiently distinguishable from a generic term ("open AI"). I think it's a bizarre ruling given that everyone already knows what OpenAI is.

Everyone on HN knows what OpenAI is, but there are tons of people who use ChatGPT and either don’t know OpenAI or don’t know the distinction between OpenAI (the company) and OpenAI (the conjunction of two words)

Re: OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

#58

Post by vitally3643 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #30
zkmon wrote: post #2

Someone finally asks some sensible questions, about hijacking of the term "open".

I seem to remember the company behind either Monster Cables, or Monster energy drinks, going after anyone that used the word “monster,” even in casual context.

It was Monster Cables who, blessedly, are nearly irrelevant nowadays. Apparently they tried to pivot into online gambling a few years ago.

Re: OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

#59

Post by jasode »

The story about the ruling really doesn't explain why another company called OpenText that's been around since 1991 and has a valid trademark registration in EU but OpenAI would be invalid. OpenText also has its Europe headquarters in Germany: https://www.opentext.com/about/office-locations

Any legal guesses as to why those 2 companies are treated differently with regards to the very generic words : "open", "text", "AI" ?

EDIT add another example is Open Systems that has a office in Switzerland. https://www.open-systems.com/

The trademark registrations search results: https://www.tmdn.org/tmview/#/tmview/results?page=1&pageSize...

We can assume the OpenAI lawyers brought up these and other similar examples and the court rejected the past examples as a valid argument.

Re: OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

#60

Post by sebastiennight »

krembo wrote: post #42

Weird decision, if so I wonder what would they say about other trademarks like Apple..

Apple is a valid trademark in the "computers" category, but would not be accepted in the "food" category.

Here are the 13 valid trademarks in France containing the word "apple" in the same category as fruit: https://data.inpi.fr/search?advancedSearch=%257B%2522checkbo...

None of them are descriptive of the actual fruit.

"Apples in the Sky" is a valid trademark only because apples in the sky do not exist. If there was a strange meteorobiological event where such fruit started to grow in the clouds, this would no longer be a valid trademark for someone to create, because it would be descriptive of a category of things in the real world.

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