No 'GPT' Trademark For OpenAI (techcrunch.com) 22
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has denied OpenAI's attempt to trademark "GPT," ruling that the term is "merely descriptive" and therefore unable to be registered. From a report: [...] The name, according to the USPTO, doesn't meet the standards to register for a trademark and the protections a "TM" after the name affords. (Incidentally, they refused once back in October, and this is a "FINAL" in all caps denial of the application.) As the denial document puts it: "Registration is refused because the applied-for mark merely describes a feature, function, or characteristic of applicant's goods and services."
OpenAI argued that it had popularized the term GPT, which stands in this case for "generative pre-trained transformer," describing the nature of the machine learning model. It's generative because it produces new (ish) material, pre-trained in that it is a large model trained centrally on a proprietary database, and transformer is the name of a particular method of building AIs (discovered by Google researchers in 2017) that allows for much larger models to be trained. But the patent office pointed out that GPT was already in use in numerous other contexts and by other companies in related ones.
OpenAI argued that it had popularized the term GPT, which stands in this case for "generative pre-trained transformer," describing the nature of the machine learning model. It's generative because it produces new (ish) material, pre-trained in that it is a large model trained centrally on a proprietary database, and transformer is the name of a particular method of building AIs (discovered by Google researchers in 2017) that allows for much larger models to be trained. But the patent office pointed out that GPT was already in use in numerous other contexts and by other companies in related ones.
Windows (Score:3)
Microsoft popularized the word "Windows" but couldn't get a trademark on it either. /s
Re: (Score:2)
*Ducks and covers under the MBR umbrella*
Re: (Score:2)
Sigh..... hint: /s means something.
/s means something. (Score:2)
/s means per second
eg Gb/s means gigabit per second (data transfer rate) and m/s means metres per second (speed)
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Actually, the term windows was in common use for a software terminal screen within a larger display before MS used the term. They should have trademarked "MS Windows" or some such.
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IIRC that's what they did or maybe it was Microsoft Windows (or both and 800 variations) but could you imagine how crazy it would have been to get a trademark on "windows"? Huge overreach and properly stomped on.
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What are rectangular panes of glass, Alex?
That'd be OK. (Score:1)
It's OK for two different companies to trademark the same word in two different industries.
Famously Apple Records (beetle's label) and Apple Computers (the guys who made the Apple ][+) both trademarked the word apple.
It wasn't a problem until the computer company started making music products like the ipod.
GUID Partition Table (Score:4, Insightful)
But the patent office pointed out that GPT was already in use in numerous other contexts and by other companies in related ones.
Perhaps if they had wanted to trademark the abbreviation they should have chosen one that isn't already used in technology.
Re: GUID Partition Table (Score:2)
"ChatGPT" is still OK (Score:3)
I think it's clear, but the article says only the "GPT" part was invalidated, so "ChatGPT" and *GPT stuff would still be valid trademarks.
Luckily (Score:2)
Tired of every article being about A.I. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
A reasonable request, but this story wouldn't warrant that tag. It's about legal maneuvering and legal/bureaucratic decisions.
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Oh man, if he had said that he really would have deserved all of that criticism. But considering what he actually said, and did, [mentalfloss.com] he comes off sounding quite reasonable.
Back on topic, if no one else takes the initiative in making an ElizaGPT I may have to look into it.
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But why did they let SQL Server slip on by? (Score:2)
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Because it's "Microsoft SQL Server." Also, just off the top of my head, "Pages."
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Sybase, Microsoft and Ashton-Tate started to work together in 1988 to port Sybase SQL Server from UNIX to OS/2. Microsoft later released it for Windows NT, and Sybase renamed their version to Adaptive Server Enterprise,
That's great newsGPT! (Score:1)
nuf sedGPT