OpenAI sues over ‘nearly identical’ trademark

Dispute dates back to 2015 when ChatGPT developer founded company | Artificial intelligence research company accuses the firm of manufacturing evidence to gain a trademark registration.

The developer of ChatGPT and DALL-E, has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against a company named Open Artificial Intelligence.

OpenAI filed the complaint at the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, August 4.

‘Misleading’ the USPTO

But the origins of the dispute date back to 2015, after the US AI research company launched in December of that year.

The developer alleges that Guy Ravine, the owner of Open Artificial Intelligence, filed a trademark application for a nearly identical mark, ‘Open AI’ on the exact same day that OpenAI was founded— December 11 2015—with the US Patent and Trademark Office ( USPTO).

While the USPTO initially refused to register Ravine’s applied-for mark—on the ground that the initial submission had not shown the mark was being used—OpenAI later accused the company of using manufactured evidence related to their website to mislead the agency into believing that its mark was in use.

The complaint acknowledged that between December 2015 and December 2022, OpenAI never objected to the defendant’s use or registration of the disputed marks.

But the situation changed after the developer contacted the company last year complaining that their website was redirecting users to OpenAI’s site. In that email, OpenAI inquired about acquiring the domain from Ravine.

According to OpenAI, Ravine responded by saying: “Elon Musk paid $11 million for the Tesla domain and trademark in 2017.

“As we both know, OpenAI holds the potential to become larger than Tesla, and in either event, will become one of the largest companies in the world in a relatively short period of time. So the ultimate value of the domain and the brand are substantial.”

Following OpenAI’s February 2022 contact with Ravine, the complaint alleged that the disputed domain name then began directing users to a website titled ‘CryptoArt’ by July 2022.

However, this website did not use or display the infringing mark, nor did the ‘CryptoArt’ site provide the goods or services for which the infringing mark was registered, noted OpenAI.

Consumer confusion

After being contacted by OpenAI, Ravine filed letters of protest with the USPTO regarding OpenAI’s new trademark applications—alleging infringement of his own registered mark.

The developer countered by accusing the defendants in its Friday filing of “unlawfully adopting” the name ‘Open AI’ after OpenAI began operations, to “evidently to sow consumer confusion by falsely associating themselves with OpenAI”.

“OpenAI brings this lawsuit to stop the defendants from confusing the millions of users of OpenAI’s products into mistakenly believing that defendants have any connection to, association with, or sponsorship by OpenAI when, in fact, there is none,” said the complaint.

It argued that the defendants sought to make a profit by confusing the public into thinking that there is an affiliation between its website and OpenAI.

“Defendants should not be allowed to profit from their misappropriation of OpenAI’s established name, leverage for themselves OpenAI’s goodwill, or fraudulently divert public interest in and demand for OpenAI’s products,” said the complaint.

Millions of users

OpenAI further outlined how over the past seven years it has researched and developed AI models and applications.

This effort, it added, has led to the release of numerous AI tools, including the ChatGPT chatbot, the DALL-E text-to-image generation software, and the Whisper automatic speech recognition (ASR) system.

“These products and services—in particular ChatGPT—have been extraordinarily popular. For example, OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot was widely adopted, with tens of millions of users in the months after it launched.

“Since its inception in 2015, OpenAI has developed valid and enforceable nationwide trademark rights in its OpenAI marks,” said the AI developer.

OpenAI further added that it had “continuously used the mark ‘OpenAI’ in commerce in connection with its AI research services since at least December 2015”, while concluding that Ravine has not taken any steps to use the OpenAI marks in connection with goods or services in commerce.

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