US Patent OfficetrademarkUS Patent and Trademark Bureau (PTO) Rejected OpenAI Enable GPT They rejected OpenAI's trademark application for the term, arguing that GPT means Generative Pre-trained Transformer — an overly general term.Competitors may be prevented from describing their products as GPT.
OpenAI argues that GPT is not a descriptive word or a generic term, and consumers would “instantly understand” its meaning.
The PTO wrote in its Feb. 6 decision that it does not matter that consumers do not know what GPT means — because those who use the technology do understand what GPT refers to a general type of software, not just OpenAI products. GPT refers to a general type of software, not just OpenAI products.
Since the rise of generative AI, many other AI services have added GPT to their product names.
According to theverge, the term GPT became closely associated with OpenAI after ChatGPT and its AI model GPT-3 (and later GPT-4) became popular. When it opened ChatGPT to external developers, the company also called its custom chatbot GPT. However, recently, OpenAI has been giving different brand names to other services, such as a text-to-video generation model called Sora.
This is not the first time the United States has rejected OpenAI's trademark claim for GPT.This is not the first time the United States has rejected OpenAI’s trademark claim against GPT.The last time was in May 2023.The company could appeal again to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, again asking to register the term GPT as a trademark.