>More pertinently "the term is purely descriptive and therefore lacks the distinctiveness required for trademark protection."

As I wrote in my other comment, "open systems" also can be purely descriptive and yet Open Systems seems to be a valid trademark in Europe.

I'm not defending OpenAI. I'm just confused that the rules for allowing trademarks for ordinary words and phrases don't look consistent at the surface level.

I think there is most likely set of adjectives that would fall under same reasoning. GreenAI or FreeAI likely would be also be refused.

On other hand RedAI or BlueAI might very well pass. It is not entirely unreasonable decision if you consider if the terms would be used in regular conversations on AI.

While the industry is currently using "open weights" or "open models", the use of open AI could equally be used now.

ShowMeTheMonAI ?

Extremely silly.

Take, for example, OpenText. [1]

Nothing about it is free, or open source code, or in any other sense publicly accessible. [2]

I don't know if they operate in the EU, but I presume any application for a trademark would be rejected.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenText

[2] It's "Open" as it turns paper documents into more easily accessible digital formats. But not public in any way.

Every large company does this to some extent, because thre's a concept in US trademark law that if you don't aggressively and pre-emptively defend your mark then 'constructive abandonment' becomes a valid defense against infringement. That means people can rip off your trade mark and then say in court 'well, I thought he company had given up ownership of the trademark because they didn't sue 'monster plush toys', so I decided to call my energy drink 'Monster Brew.'' This is also why US companies slap a 'TM' next to every instance of their trademark, even though it becomes a visual distraction in graphic design terms. Lawyers will argue that if you don't aggressively police the bounds of your intellectual property at all times then it evaporates.

It was Monster Cables who, blessedly, are nearly irrelevant nowadays. Apparently they tried to pivot into online gambling a few years ago.

The most ludicrous case of trademark issues I've seen to date has been Apple suing Prepear because they had a pear as their logo but Monster suing someone because of the term monster is not far from falling equally as far from the tree of wisdom and common sense.

or Facebook going after anyone with ...book in the name.

See also: Edge Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Games#Trademark_disputes

The argument doesn't hinge on whether OpenAI is actually open. Rather it seems to have to do with the name being insufficiently distinguishable from a generic term ("open AI"). I think it's a bizarre ruling given that everyone already knows what OpenAI is.

They haven't prevented that. They have prevented trademarking the terms, thus other people whose AI offerings are Open are in fact allowed to describe their products as an Open AI, I presume they are not allowed to describe their products as being OpenAI however as that would create consumer confusion.

Furthermore they have not said anything about [adjective] being non trademarkable, they have said that you shouldn't be able to trademark things that have specific meaning in your industry, as Open has some specific meaning in the software industry.

Thus you would probably be allowed to name your things [big] +[proudct/service provided] or in this case bigAI because big does not really imply a specific desirable quality in the Software industry.

Now before you start talking of how you can see blah blah how big would be useful blah blah, as is the tradition whenever programmers encounter a legal decision that they do not agree with, it just ain't gonna work. I guess though I cannot prevent the inevitable, but nobody in IT says does it have the technical quality of "bigness" before purchasing, but they do about the quality of "Openness", so obviously some adjectives would be untrademarkable in this context, if you named your AI SecureAI probably no go, If you named your AI UglyAssAI probably fine.

Preventing the hijacking and privatization of short phrases and language in general is actually an excellent thing. I applaud this decision, and wish for the rules to become even tighter.

This seems a lot more sustainable than allowing me to trademark a tire company called "WinterTire" and enabling me to sue any other tire company that tries to capitalise on my trademark.

(And if WinterTire Co was anything like OpenAI, it'd be focused on making summer tires)

Companies can be named after random nonsense, ‘pink catfish’ could easily be the world’s #1 supplier of firearms and nobody would find it strange.

Caterpillar, Apple, Kellogg, etc really don’t have anything to do with the underlying product but neither do people’s names.

This ruling is very early in the process and doesn't prevent anything - but given the more likely bad path outcome of this case for OpenAI it wouldn't disallow their usage of OpenAI but instead prevent them from shutting down competitors that claim to offer an open AI.

This UDRP panel only had jurisdiction over domain name disputes. They still threatened going to court over trademark and we had more important things to do. The new domain is https://ScaleRF.com/

But that's on OpenAI for selecting that company name. EU trademark law hasn't changed, this was always going to be a problematic trademark if challenged

They still have the trademark on their logo

If I search for "Open AI" on google right now the first search results are openai.com, chatgpt.com and the OpenAI wikipedia page. None of which are open AI.

It is, though: https://guidelines.euipo.europa.eu/2319054/2227105/trade-mar...

HopingAI seems more pertinent

I trust the judges on that one, they know the law better than I do, obviously.

I am also not discussing about who is at fault, I agree that it is on OpenAI.

I just don't want, say, some company that is even shadier than OpenAI to launch an OpenAI branded protect with the intention to mislead people.

Maybe grant OpenAI the trademark, but do not allow them to use it on products that are not actually open, but I guess it is legally problematic.

No, they are very much not. That's the supposed benefit of patents and/or copyright. Trademarks are for ensuring there is no consumer confusion about which company they are trading with.

I think you are confusing trademarks with patents.

Trademarks don't prevent you from copying anything, they only prevent you from being misleading regarding the origin.

I think patents are for innovation and trademarks are to make sure that people can reliably know who they’re dealing with.

Waiting for Apple to enter the food industry, with a highly specific McIntosh-based genetic lineage that they dub the "iApple".

What about "Savoury apple" ?

But what's the alternative for the trademarks that are truly universally known? Does it serve the public for me to be able to sell unauthorized Coca-Cola brand products, or more likely, the trademark owner selling a token item in each category to maintain the right to prevent others from using it?

Plenty of companies use generic words for their name, and they still get trademarks.

American Airlines for example is indeed just an American airline. The Container Store, Vision Center, General Motors, International business machines (IBM), the list goes on.

Even Microsoft is just a contraction of their original product, microcomputer software.

Give me a break. Apple doesn't sell apples.

It's not going to be something like that. Anyone legitimate is going to want to use a different name because of the confusion.

The only people naming something "OpenAI" are going to be trying to trick you into downloading their scammy chatGPT clone.

You just don't like OpenAI and are for anything that hurts them, without thinking through the consequences.

What will harm consumers is the scammy "OpenAI" chat app that I can now legally upload to app stores in the EU, in hopes of tricking people into thinking it's a genuine app.

No, at least not in the EU. That's the meaning of this decision.

I completely agree with your last point. They shouldn't have ownership of "Open" in relation to "AI" broadly speaking, but their company name "OpenAI" should be protected.

Entirely possible, seeming more likely, that I didn't have enough background information on the short article.

All OpenText EUIPO trademarks I can find are also figurative https://www.tmdn.org/tmview/#/tmview/results?page=1&pageSize...

>Open AI has an independent descriptive meaning as composite term.

See my edit. "Open Systems" also had an independent descriptive meaning. The phrase "open systems" was a very common generic phrase in 1990s when companies talking about POSIX compliance was a big deal. (E.g. Microsoft touted POSIX in Windows NT.)