> The EUIPO found that the word "open" would be understood by the relevant public as meaning freely accessible, while the combination with "AI" (artificial intelligence) would be interpreted as referring to products based on openly accessible artificial intelligence.
> for certain software and information technology goods and services, the term is purely descriptive and therefore lacks the distinctiveness required for trademark protection
More pertinently "the term is purely descriptive and therefore lacks the distinctiveness required for trademark protection." I.e. the problem isn't that OpenAI's products don't match their description, but that trademarking it would unduly prevent others from describing their openly accessible artificial intelligence as "open AI."
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.
I seem to remember the company behind either Monster Cables, or Monster energy drinks, going after anyone that used the word “monster,” even in casual context.
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.
Everyone on HN knows what OpenAI is, but there are tons of people who use ChatGPT and either don’t know OpenAI or don’t know the distinction between OpenAI (the company) and OpenAI (the conjunction of two words)
Trademark law isn't about what "everyone already knows". It's about whether a given mark meets the criteria for legal protection in a give context. So if say an foss ML project described what they do as "open AI" the company known as OpenAI would have a right to defend the mark. This is saying they could not.
> So if say an foss ML project described what they do as "open AI" the company known as OpenAI would have a right to defend the mark. This is saying they could not.
Well if that's all that's at stake here, it seems very reasonable.
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.
The story about the ruling really doesn't explain why another company called OpenText that's been around since 1991 and has a valid trademark registration in EU but OpenAI would be invalid. OpenText also has its Europe headquarters in Germany: https://www.opentext.com/about/office-locations
Any legal guesses as to why those 2 companies are treated differently with regards to the very generic words : "open", "text", "AI" ?
First of all, can you explain what an "open text" is?
Second, as far as I can find through the French IP office (INPI), OpenText (single word) is trademarked as a figurative trademark (meaning they are basically protecting the image of the logo), not a verbal trademark.[0]
Which is what you typically do when you know that your trademark is too likely to be rejected (as being too descriptive), but you want to give it a semblance of protection.
So, no, I wouldn't assume they have been treated better.
> Any legal guesses as to why those 2 companies are treated differently with regards to the very generic words : "open", "text", "AI" ?
The legal situation may have changed since 1991. For example: The ruling refers to "Regulation 2017/1001", which, as the name suggests, only came into force in 2017.
As much as I hate OpenAI for hijacking the term "open", and I love the idea of OpenAI losing, I am not sure if I agree with it.
Trademarks are first intended to protect consumers, so that if it says Coca Cola, then the Coca Cola company made it, for the better of for the worse, but at least you know.
OpenAI is already a well known name in Europe, and when I see OpenAI on a product, I expect it to be a product of that company. It doesn't mean I will want to use it, I may even want to avoid it, but I don't want it to be from someone else. By denying that trademark, anyone could call their product OpenAI, and I don't think that situation would benefit the consumer.
Key difference between the trademark systems here: in the EU system you don’t get a trademark by trading with a specific name and it then being recognized. It’s the other way around: the name must be unique, not confusing, and highly specific. It’s actually irrelevant whether a product exists or is traded at all.
Having gone through the process and gotten both approvals and rejections, the line is pretty clear.
But people actively searching for AI products who are perhaps a little less technically inclined might. And if they stumble upon a platform that by all accounts seems to be affiliated with OpenAI, that could be problematic, especially with the level of trust people seem to be comfortable handing to LLMs.
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.
The only problem I see here is the name doesn't reflect the reality. Time to put something in place that tells them to rebrand and continuously charges them for fraudulent misrepresentation or something until they do.
This really is the crux of the image, and now legal, issues. OpenAI hovered up tons of money and IP under the claim that they were doing this for the public good. Now they’ve essentially admitted that was all bullshit and that they want to sell the distillation of human created knowledge and content for a fee. It’s certainly bullshit to call that bait and switch “open”
Well, they could have used a less generic and misleading name (it is not very open, as noted in the article). OpenAI only really have themselves to blame here.
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.
I understood it more in the line of preventing a company from naming itself "Low sugar" and then blocking other companies from adding the words "Low sugar" to their packaging. Same thing with OpenAI, another company should be free to create an AI that's fully open and tag it as "Open AI" without fearing legal problems with OpenAI.
Exactly. Apple can register Apple because they don't sell apples so it's not misleading. OpenAI can't register OpenAI because they make ai but it's not open. They could call themselves Peaches, OpenWombat or ClosedAI and there wouldn't be any issues because those wouldn't be misleading.
> OpenAI can't register OpenAI because they make ai but it's not open
That's not the reason they can't. They can't register the trademark because it's a descriptive one.
If I try to trademark "hacker forum", an EU trademark officer will reject it not because my website doesn't have hackers on it, but because it's descriptive and prevents others from starting hacker forums.
So
> They could call themselves... ClosedAI
is also incorrect, because it's descriptive as well.
You know, if it was someone offering a truly open (weights + training data) and available model running on consumer hardware in a privacy sandbox, I would welcome that "harm".
Ah yes, chosing a name that transports openness and transparency when the opposite is the case, and complaining about not being able to register that name as a trademark, which will cause financial harm the said company -- but somehow there's still people to spin it the other way around so it harms consumers now, therefore it was a bad decision.
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.
"Apples in the Sky" is a valid trademark only because apples in the sky do not exist. If there was a strange meteorobiological event where such fruit started to grow in the clouds, this would no longer be a valid trademark for someone to create, because it would be descriptive of a category of things in the real world.
This feels like a slight misstep that could result in consumer harm. The name is incredibly vague, without doubt, but to claim "OpenAI" doesn't evoke a very specific company at this point in the minds of consumers seems myopic.
Whether it evokes a specific company now isn't relevant to the ruling. The trademark was refused, and this was a challenge to that initial refusal, and the refusal was upheld.
I somewhat agree with the EU here. It's far too generic, "Open" and "AI." To grant the trademark would mean any AI product that actually IS open, or open source, etc. cannot say they are "Open AI" which IMO would be a problem.
Where I might disagree with the ruling is spacing vs. no spacing. I'd have granted them the trademark on specifically "openai" as a single word but not "Open AI". Let's them defend their name against anyone else calling themselves "OpenAI" but not any other product advertising itself as "Open" "AI".
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.
> The EUIPO found that the word "open" would be understood by the relevant public as meaning freely accessible, while the combination with "AI" (artificial intelligence) would be interpreted as referring to products based on openly accessible artificial intelligence.
> for certain software and information technology goods and services, the term is purely descriptive and therefore lacks the distinctiveness required for trademark protection
edit: add the latter statement
More pertinently "the term is purely descriptive and therefore lacks the distinctiveness required for trademark protection." I.e. the problem isn't that OpenAI's products don't match their description, but that trademarking it would unduly prevent others from describing their openly accessible artificial intelligence as "open AI."
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.
UnicornAI. You’re welcome
> RedAI
I suppose that could be a generic term for any AI used as an mock adversarial or sparring-partner role, like how "red team" is today.
> BlueAI
Would refer to an LLM/agent rained to simulate clinical depression...
...at which point I would ask why we're creating things that will know only pain and suffering? Are we the baddies now?
BeAfraidUhhhhhAI
Someone finally asks some sensible questions, about hijacking of the term "open".
I seem to remember the company behind either Monster Cables, or Monster energy drinks, going after anyone that used the word “monster,” even in casual context.
It was Monster Cables who, blessedly, are nearly irrelevant nowadays. Apparently they tried to pivot into online gambling a few years ago.
I mean, it might also be Monster Cables, but Monster Energy is still doing it :).
https://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/article/monster-energy-... https://techraptor.net/gaming/news/gods-and-monsters-started... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-berkshire-46369442 https://www.thegamer.com/monster-energy-goes-after-glowstick... https://www.koreaboo.com/news/yg-entertainment-wins-trademar... https://www.gamesradar.com/monster-energy-has-even-gone-afte...
and many more.
I thought you were joking, but that seemingly was the argument.
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.
Everyone on HN knows what OpenAI is, but there are tons of people who use ChatGPT and either don’t know OpenAI or don’t know the distinction between OpenAI (the company) and OpenAI (the conjunction of two words)
Trademark law isn't about what "everyone already knows". It's about whether a given mark meets the criteria for legal protection in a give context. So if say an foss ML project described what they do as "open AI" the company known as OpenAI would have a right to defend the mark. This is saying they could not.
> So if say an foss ML project described what they do as "open AI" the company known as OpenAI would have a right to defend the mark. This is saying they could not.
Well if that's all that's at stake here, it seems very reasonable.
Preventing companies named [adjective]+[product/service provided] doesn't seem sustainable.
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.
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.
Caterpillar does have a lot to do with the product. It crawls on a track and a photographer thought the track looked like a caterpillar .
And they went out of their way to sue anyone that dare to use the cat word in the name or anything resembling an apple in the logo.
They didn't have "open" or "free" as prefix.
But apple still goes after real apple producers, who are older than apple.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/apple-swiss-trademark/
Something is wrong, when this is happening.
The story about the ruling really doesn't explain why another company called OpenText that's been around since 1991 and has a valid trademark registration in EU but OpenAI would be invalid. OpenText also has its Europe headquarters in Germany: https://www.opentext.com/about/office-locations
Any legal guesses as to why those 2 companies are treated differently with regards to the very generic words : "open", "text", "AI" ?
First of all, can you explain what an "open text" is?
Second, as far as I can find through the French IP office (INPI), OpenText (single word) is trademarked as a figurative trademark (meaning they are basically protecting the image of the logo), not a verbal trademark.[0]
Which is what you typically do when you know that your trademark is too likely to be rejected (as being too descriptive), but you want to give it a semblance of protection.
So, no, I wouldn't assume they have been treated better.
[0] https://data.inpi.fr/search?advancedSearch=%257B%2522checkbo...
Maybe it's because in 1991 the word open in software wasn't ringing any bells for your average joe.
> Any legal guesses as to why those 2 companies are treated differently with regards to the very generic words : "open", "text", "AI" ?
The legal situation may have changed since 1991. For example: The ruling refers to "Regulation 2017/1001", which, as the name suggests, only came into force in 2017.
As much as I hate OpenAI for hijacking the term "open", and I love the idea of OpenAI losing, I am not sure if I agree with it.
Trademarks are first intended to protect consumers, so that if it says Coca Cola, then the Coca Cola company made it, for the better of for the worse, but at least you know.
OpenAI is already a well known name in Europe, and when I see OpenAI on a product, I expect it to be a product of that company. It doesn't mean I will want to use it, I may even want to avoid it, but I don't want it to be from someone else. By denying that trademark, anyone could call their product OpenAI, and I don't think that situation would benefit the consumer.
[delayed]
Good. The trademark would ultimately allow them to sue any company for claiming it provides "open AI". So only right choice to reject it.
Key difference between the trademark systems here: in the EU system you don’t get a trademark by trading with a specific name and it then being recognized. It’s the other way around: the name must be unique, not confusing, and highly specific. It’s actually irrelevant whether a product exists or is traded at all.
Having gone through the process and gotten both approvals and rejections, the line is pretty clear.
We had a similar result when a big U.S. defense company (Kratos) tried to take our open source project's domain name: open.space
The panel ruled in our favor, that their OPENSPACE trademark is probably invalid because it is descriptive.
https://domainnamewire.com/2026/04/08/u-s-defense-contractor...
ChatGPT is a household name. And OpenAi is actually not, people outside tech don't necessarily know it.
But people actively searching for AI products who are perhaps a little less technically inclined might. And if they stumble upon a platform that by all accounts seems to be affiliated with OpenAI, that could be problematic, especially with the level of trust people seem to be comfortable handing to LLMs.
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.
The only problem I see here is the name doesn't reflect the reality. Time to put something in place that tells them to rebrand and continuously charges them for fraudulent misrepresentation or something until they do.
Open source charity suddenly becoming capitalistic not going as planned
This really is the crux of the image, and now legal, issues. OpenAI hovered up tons of money and IP under the claim that they were doing this for the public good. Now they’ve essentially admitted that was all bullshit and that they want to sell the distillation of human created knowledge and content for a fee. It’s certainly bullshit to call that bait and switch “open”
This seems like a bad decision to me that will ultimately harm consumers, if anyone can launch a product and say it’s made by “OpenAI”.
Well, they could have used a less generic and misleading name (it is not very open, as noted in the article). OpenAI only really have themselves to blame here.
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.
I understood it more in the line of preventing a company from naming itself "Low sugar" and then blocking other companies from adding the words "Low sugar" to their packaging. Same thing with OpenAI, another company should be free to create an AI that's fully open and tag it as "Open AI" without fearing legal problems with OpenAI.
> Even Microsoft is just a contraction of their original product, microcomputer software.
Hopefully that was also a family suggestion because I can't think of a more sloppy name than "Microcomputer software"
In the US
Many of these companies have EU trademarks as well.
Give me a break. Apple doesn't sell apples.
Exactly. Apple can register Apple because they don't sell apples so it's not misleading. OpenAI can't register OpenAI because they make ai but it's not open. They could call themselves Peaches, OpenWombat or ClosedAI and there wouldn't be any issues because those wouldn't be misleading.
Open could mean open to integration (API), or opens your mind, or opens possibilities.
> OpenAI can't register OpenAI because they make ai but it's not open
That's not the reason they can't. They can't register the trademark because it's a descriptive one.
If I try to trademark "hacker forum", an EU trademark officer will reject it not because my website doesn't have hackers on it, but because it's descriptive and prevents others from starting hacker forums.
So
> They could call themselves... ClosedAI
is also incorrect, because it's descriptive as well.
>OpenAI can't register OpenAI because they make ai but it's not open.
Not the issue. Per the ruling even if their AI was open they still couldn't have the trademark.
No, the opinion doesn't have to do with whether OpenAI is open.
Do they have a trademark on the word apple with no other context? I thought it was Apple computer, which is distinct.
You know, if it was someone offering a truly open (weights + training data) and available model running on consumer hardware in a privacy sandbox, I would welcome that "harm".
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.
OpenAI would probably still have some kind of claim against a company that did that.
No, at least not in the EU. That's the meaning of this decision.
"It will harm consumers"
Ah yes, chosing a name that transports openness and transparency when the opposite is the case, and complaining about not being able to register that name as a trademark, which will cause financial harm the said company -- but somehow there's still people to spin it the other way around so it harms consumers now, therefore it was a bad decision.
That's the definition of anti-consumer behavior
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.
I use OpenAI. I just am against anti-consumer behaviour
They should just rename it to ClosedAI.
It would be more honest to their customers and better show who they are and what they stand for.
Weird decision, if so I wonder what would they say about other trademarks like Apple..
Apple is a valid trademark in the "computers" category, but would not be accepted in the "food" category.
Here are the 13 valid trademarks in France containing the word "apple" in the same category as fruit: https://data.inpi.fr/search?advancedSearch=%257B%2522checkbo...
None of them are descriptive of the actual fruit.
"Apples in the Sky" is a valid trademark only because apples in the sky do not exist. If there was a strange meteorobiological event where such fruit started to grow in the clouds, this would no longer be a valid trademark for someone to create, because it would be descriptive of a category of things in the real world.
Touché
This feels like a slight misstep that could result in consumer harm. The name is incredibly vague, without doubt, but to claim "OpenAI" doesn't evoke a very specific company at this point in the minds of consumers seems myopic.
Whether it evokes a specific company now isn't relevant to the ruling. The trademark was refused, and this was a challenge to that initial refusal, and the refusal was upheld.
I somewhat agree with the EU here. It's far too generic, "Open" and "AI." To grant the trademark would mean any AI product that actually IS open, or open source, etc. cannot say they are "Open AI" which IMO would be a problem.
Where I might disagree with the ruling is spacing vs. no spacing. I'd have granted them the trademark on specifically "openai" as a single word but not "Open AI". Let's them defend their name against anyone else calling themselves "OpenAI" but not any other product advertising itself as "Open" "AI".
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.
The EU shouldn't be held to bad decisions made by the US trademark office.
Ah yes, classic max capitalism take