> though they deserve every right to protect their trademark.
And they can, Twitter (why everything gets claimed as his personal work I never know) isn't using their trademark.
As they (Groq) themselves have said...
> the difference of one consonant (q, k) only matters to scrabblers and spell checkers
Grok the term has been around since at least 1961.[0] The fact that a company decided to take a common term (especially in the CS field), change one letter and trademark it doesn't mean nobody can use the original spelling at all.
Funnily enough, Groq is trying to claim grok and groq are not associated terms in court filings while trying to bully another company with the same name:
> The word “Groq” essentially did not exist before Ross created it and has no known meaning in any language beyond its intended association with Groq, Inc.
vs that companies reply
> The word “grok” originated in Robert Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land. Merriam Webster defines “grok” as “to understand profoundly and intuitively.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines “grok” as “[t]o understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with.”
Once Groq realized their trademark didn't include healthcare data, they tried to trademark...the other companies name.
Trademarks are more nuanced than you are relaying here.
Groq, in arguing that their mark is different from "grok" (at the USPTO) is because one cannot trademark common words. They are applying for plain marks (without font/color/logo) and this is very normal. I went through this with a proper name trademark
In the Groq vs Grok, they are arguing that the average person will confuse the marks (as can be seen in many HN posts about Groq, like this one). Their argument is that Grok should not be given a trademark beforehand due to this potential confusion. They can also take the case to court should the trademark be granted. Given the common confusion, Groq appears to have good standing to make this argument.
To call someone defending their own trademarks "bullying" is inaccurate
> Their argument is that Grok should not be given a trademark beforehand due to this potential confusion.
Groq says no such thing. Their two public things so far include
1) a company that rebranded to Groq Healthcare < 2 year after Groq launched (their trademark at the time had nothing to do with health, they then added it to their trdemark and tried to trademark the competitors name)
Groq makes zero revenue, needs hundreds on chips to run 1 model, and runs everything at lower precision. SambaNova has a lot of revenue, and runs at that speed at full precision on a single node. It really isn’t a competition.
I do know that meaning of "grok", but I always assumed the more specific one in the context of neural networks was what informed these two naming choices, although I really don't know the exact timeline.
Didn't know about Heinlein coining it though, that's cool!
I'm well aware of the "complaints about downvotes beget downvotes" meme and was expecting it here, but sometimes I am genuinely curious about the nature of the disagreement. Here I really just wanted to learn what people think the actual etymology is. I get and appreciate "I don't find this contribution helpful", but I really dislike a "I think you're factually wrong but can't be bothered to correct you" downvote.
As an aside, I wonder when "please don't make a quote from the HN commenting guidelines the only contribution of your comment" will join that list...
> As an aside, I wonder when "please don't make a quote from the HN commenting guidelines the only contribution of your comment" will join that list...
HN is largely community driven moderation, helping dang do his job, so I suspect this meta don't wouldn't make it
I didn't comment on the substance because others already had by then, not sure why they didn't prefer your OG comment...