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by fortyseven 1148 days ago
Why on earth would you call this "copilot" when GitHub has already long established that as a name in this space? :I
4 comments

I believe aviators have been using it longer.
Indeed, but under trademark law, the context-of-use matters, and is what allows generic terms from one domain – like 'copilot', 'apple', 'slack', 'y combinator' – to become defensible trademarks in another commercial-offerings domain.

From this landing page's headline & 1st paragraph, I was still thinking they were talking about the broader-market, better-known Github Copilot – also a for-pay LLM-driven coding assistant! – in some way. In the 2nd paragraph, I saw they were just reusing the name of someone else's LLM coding assistant for something different that they independently trained.

Note also the current submission headline here is "ChatGPT for Hardware Design", not the page's "AI For Hardware Design with Copilot".

Did the submitter not use the usually-requested original page title, because they knew `Copilot` would be misunderstood? (They created another misunderstanding via their change: ChatGPT is only an analogy for what Flux.ai's product is doing, rather than a contributing part of the system.)

If they aren't using ChatGPT in Flux.ai, that's textbook trademark misuse!

Check out my new product -- It's Windows for Raspberry Pi! (Actually a Ubuntu port)

Their page doesn't mention 'ChatGPT' - that analogy was added by the submitter. But, Flux.ai has named their LLM-based coding assistant 'Copilot'.
Github can't monopolize the word "copilot". It's a basic english word to describe someone that is assisting you to steer a vessel/team/project. It's been around for hundreds of years in naval industry, and in aviation since the dawn of flight.
Oh they can if they get a trademark. It's a navigational term, but not a computing term. Inventing a new meaning for a word standard use of trademark.
Was wondering the same thing - just seems a bit daft and is going to really confuse people.
Yeah, this seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Rename it to 'Solder' or something before that happens.
GitHub doesn’t own the copilot trademark. I would actually like to have these assistants called “copilots” instead of “coding LLM”. Since these are going to be a part of our lives let’s use a useful and memorable name.
Simply via commercial use, Github could choose to assert a common-law trademark on 'Copilot' within their field-of-use. But also, they've registered "Github Copilot" at the USPTO:

https://trademarks.justia.com/974/60/github-97460083.html

Presumedly they would likewise register "Flux Copilot"?
Do you think I could offer a custom-built Windows PC under the registered trademark "Gordon's Macintosh"?
Except that "copilot" doesn't appear to be registered by itself in this field, only in combinations. But we'll see.