[jadayesnaamsi]

Great. I hope they find a real name to their product, that would not be an acronym.

We can critic Google as much as we want, but at least it's a bit less weird to say "Hey Gemini" compared to "Hey GPT", when you know that GPT is actually something between an abstract concept and a code implementation.

[HPsquared]

In principle an acronym (initialism really) can be an original name, e.g. IBM, BMW. This is common. This trademark seems to have been denied because it's not "original" enough. It's too generic a term.

[littlestymaar]

It's not so much that it's too generic, but that the term has been broadly used by pretty much everyone talking about transformer-based models for the past years at this point. The term has entered public domain before they even tried to register it.

[tgv]

Weirdly enough, Microsoft did get a trademark on "Windows". Perhaps OpenAI was counting on a similar decision.

[Kbelicius]

AFAIK trademarks are granted for products. Microsoft was granted that trademark for software. If you opened a window shop and tried to trademark windows you'd fail since it is an existing term in that category. Similarly GPT is a term used in the filed of AI and thus would not be allowed to be trademarked in that category. I'm sure a window shop could trademark GPT for their line of windows.

[jbenjoseph]

This is called "descriptiveness", a very bad quality for a trademark application to have.

[bonton89]

Microsoft once sued a teenager for trademark infringement for having a website called MikeRoweSoft.com. The kid's name was Mike Rowe and he lost the website in a settlement.

[kube-system]

That’s because it is expensive for kids to defend lawsuits, not because a court agreed.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

Still redirects to microsoft.com

[hulitu]

They have money, you know ...

[keiferski]

The real question is whether beemer is trademarked.

[block_dagger]

Company name vs product name

[eru]

In this example, the company is called Bayerische Motoren Werke AG. BMW is one of their trademarks.

See also how there's a company named 'Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG' with a brand called 'Porsche'. But nowadays that company is just a subsidiary of Volkswagen, and they could restructure to make the Porsche AG disappear, without doing any changes to the brand.

[ben_w]

> Volkswagen

Also, this is literally "people's car".

[thaumasiotes]

And BMW is literally "Bavarian motor works". It's fun to know, but so what?

[ben_w]

They are examples of mundane descriptions which are, in fact, trademarks.

[littlestymaar]

Aren't M&M's a product name?

[vrighter]

to play devil's advocate for a second...

referring to gpt as "hey gpt" is not really different than "computer" as used in at least one popular tv show.