The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a final refusal to OpenAI’s request to trademark “GPT,” stating that the term is “merely descriptive” of the technology it represents, as per TechCrunch reporting. This decision marks a significant challenge for OpenAI, the entity behind the widely recognized ChatGPT, as it seeks to secure proprietary rights over the term associated with its conversational AI models.
According to the USPTO, “GPT” stands for “generative pre-trained transformer,” a term that directly describes the functionality and architecture of the AI models in question. Generative indicates the model’s ability to create new content, pre-trained signifies the extensive initial training on large datasets, and transformer refers to a specific AI architecture that has been pivotal in developing advanced models since its inception in 2017.
The refusal was grounded in the observation that the term GPT is already widely used within the tech industry, including by giants like Amazon, which has publicly discussed its use of GPT models. This widespread adoption of the term for similar technologies diminishes its distinctiveness as a trademark specific to OpenAI’s offerings.
While OpenAI is not barred from using the GPT name, the USPTO’s decision limits the organization’s ability to monopolize the term. As a result, the market may see an influx of products and services adopting the GPT moniker without any direct connection to OpenAI, such as various “TalkGPT” applications already present in app stores.
Despite this setback, OpenAI’s association with the term “GPT” remains strong among the public and professionals alike, thanks to the success and visibility of ChatGPT. This first-mover advantage is expected to sustain OpenAI’s prominence in the field of generative AI, even as the term becomes more generically used across the industry.
Moving forward, OpenAI may focus on reinforcing its brand identity around the GPT series, despite the lack of formal trademark protection. By continuing to lead in the development and innovation of generative pre-trained transformer models, OpenAI can maintain the linkage between “GPT” and its groundbreaking work in AI.
