The U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace has denied OpenAI’s try and trademark “GPT,” ruling that the time period is “merely descriptive” and subsequently unable to be registered. It’s a blow to OpenAI’s branding, however don’t anticipate its opponents to start out releasing their very own model of the ever present chatbot.
ChatGPT is definitely probably the most recognizable model in AI proper now, being the most well-liked conversational mannequin in the marketplace and the one that the majority visibly took giant language fashions from curiosity to international development.
However the identify, based on the USPTO, doesn’t meet the requirements to register for a trademark and the protections a “TM” after the identify affords. (By the way, they refused as soon as again in October, and it is a “FINAL” in all caps denial of the appliance.)
Because the denial doc places it:
Registration is refused as a result of the applied-for mark merely describes a characteristic, operate, or attribute of applicant’s items and companies.
OpenAI argued that it had popularized the time period GPT, which stands on this case for “generative pre-trained transformer,” describing the character of the machine studying mannequin. It’s generative as a result of it produces new (ish) materials, pre-trained in that it’s a giant mannequin skilled centrally on a proprietary database, and transformer is the identify of a selected technique of constructing AIs (found by Google researchers in 2017) that enables for a lot bigger fashions to be skilled.
However the patent workplace identified that GPT was already in use in quite a few different contexts and by different firms in associated ones. For example, Amazon has a list for what a GPT is and the way they use them.
The argument from the patent facet is that GPT describes a facet of the product. Like in the event you had a cereal referred to as Crunchy O’s, and tried to trademark “crunchy.” Within the case of ChatGPT, it is a GPT-type AI mannequin — an idea OpenAI didn’t create, and isn’t alone in providing — that you just chat with. It could be recognizable, but it surely doesn’t meet the necessities for trademarking.
It could be that this lack of a trademark will dilute OpenAI’s dominance over GPT-related terminology. You may anticipate issues like a “TalkGPT,” no relation, to indicate up in app shops (certainly they’re already there, and quite a few) — and OpenAI can’t sue them for utilizing their model.
That mentioned, OpenAI does have the largest mindshare by far when somebody says “GPT,” so though their authorized protections are restricted, they maintain the first-brander benefit. If something they might double down on the GPT branding, logos be damned, to verify everybody is aware of that OpenAI did it first (or shut sufficient).
