- OpenAI wants to protect the GPT sign in order to avoid numerous imitations
- A trademark application for GPT has been filed, but the procedure has been delayed
- There is a contradiction between the non-profit origins of the company, and what it has become
Generative Pre-trained Transformer probably doesn’t tell you much. If you read GPT on the other hand, it should click immediately. Over time, this acronym has established itself as a trademark of language models, in the same way as the iPhone for smartphones, or, to take a French example, les frigidaires for refrigerators.
Many startups have tried to recover this term, such as ThreatGPT, MedicalGPT, DateGPT, or Elon Musk’s recent TruthGPT project. Obviously, this does not please OpenAI, the publisher of ChatGPT, which has decided to initiate proceedings to file this trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
GPT, a popular brand?
The company led by Sam Altman even chose to use an accelerated procedure to go even faster, but this process failed. According to our colleagues from Techcrunch, it is an epiphany in the foot of the company which will have to wait 5 additional months for the decision. It’s not much for ordinary mortals, but it’s huge considering the race against time in the AI sector.
Remain, a question of size, will OpenAI succeed? According to Jefferson Scher, a partner in Carr & Ferrell’s intellectual property group and chair of the firm’s trademark practice group, it’s likely.
The fame of the term ChatGPT is indeed growing over time. He cites the example of Rolex, which has now become far too famous a brand to be used on anything other than a watch.
The technology company will therefore have to demonstrate that this brand has become ultra popular to prevent other companies from using it. And according to him, we’re pretty close to when OpenAI and GPT will be familiar enough to average families to take that step.
Anyway, this procedure may seem a bit surprising from OpenAI. Indeed, and as rightly pointed out Futurism, the company was launched with a non-profit philosophy and an open source approach. However, this objective has since changed a lot, and OpenAI is rather closer to the mindset of a very large technology company which logically seeks to maximize its profits.
