[sega_sai]

Wow, I just saw in the article that NVIDIA called a new chip Vera Rubin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Rubin, also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory). How is it allowed for a commercial company to assign a name of a known person to a product ?

[Polizeiposaune]

People have sued over this sort of thing. Apple's Power Macintosh 7100 was originally codenamed "Carl Sagan":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_7100

Sagan sued. Engineers at Apple changed the name to BHA: "Butt-Head Astronomer".

He sued again. The final codename was "LAW: Lawyers are Wimps".

[CamouflagedKiwi]

It's a codename. The product will be called "R100" or "R200" etc. (And "RTX6090" etc for the consumer versions).

[altmanaltman]

I mean Nvidia has been naming thier chips after scientists for a while now Hopper, Blackwell etc. Names are not copyrightable, you can literally create a toaster and call it Einstein. It doesn't mean you're doing anything illegal. There are some exceptions like if the name is actually used by a brand (like Tesla now) or if the person is alive/recently dead, or if you claim they are in someway endorsing your project. Like claiming "Einstein always toasted bread with the Einstein toaster!" is not okay.

The way Nvidia does it is actually super respectful and it's honestly better to use names like these instead of ULTRA PRO MAX 5x etc.

[consz]

different vera rubin, common mistake

[semiquaver]

...why wouldn’t that be “allowed”?

[sega_sai]

Would you want the commercial company use your name, or the name of your relative?

[semiquaver]

Sure, why not? Especially if it’s honoring my contribution to science.

[sega_sai]

The observatory is named in honour of Vera Rubin. That makes sense. The commercial company deciding to name their new generation of chips does not (at least to me).

[pram]

Tesla???