And they fully considered the rights of ever bit of copyrighted material they consumed. It's not their fault random people on the internet don't understand what those rights are.
Yes, they considered and decided that they are big enough to violate and do what they want, since they aren't violating rights of other big entities, just of nobodies.
So, while I can point to https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
and quote from it:
"""
17 Infringement of copyright by copying
…
(2) Copying in relation to a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work means reproducing the work in any material form.
This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means.
(3) In relation to an artistic work copying includes the making of a copy in three dimensions of a two-dimensional work and the making of a copy in two dimensions of a three-dimensional work.
(4) Copying in relation to a film or broadcast includes making a photograph of the whole or any substantial part of any image forming part of the film or broadcast.
…
(6) Copying in relation to any description of work includes the making of copies which are transient or are incidental to some other use of the work.
"""
I'm not even remotely a lawyer, so I don't know if this is as relevant as it appears.
But it does appear relevant.
https://www.bentley.edu/news/popular-brands-had-their-tradem...
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=97733261&caseType=SERIAL_...
(Interestingly enough there's a Chinese ecig/vape company that also looking to trademark ChatGPT.)
Are there any legal protections available to me in this regard?
AI's do not qualify as entities that can claim copy rights or protections, which ironically makes them not qualify as entities that can infringe copy rights or protections either.
For example, "Oracle" is a valid registered trademark for cigars and for archery bow sights and for many, many other things, despite also being a trademark for one of the most litigious firms in the software industry.
https://news.yahoo.com/monster-energy-tried-pok-mon-22450025...
Monster has been involved in esports previously.
A famous example is Apple Computer and Apple Corps (the Beatles music holding company) with a long history of arguing about lines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
The key with trademarks is whether or not use/application of a trademark is "likelihood of confusion"[0].
So yeah, I can call my hardware store GPT and OpenAI can have GPT trademarked because there's no way someone could confuse them as the same thing. That's of course an easy example and if this trademark is issued anything even remotely touching AI/ML using the three letters "GPT" is probably infringing.
What's really ridiculous about this is the execs at OpenAI didn't see this coming - I think trademark application for GPT is going to be challenging while simultaneously making them look like jerks.
Plus, GPT is a non-sensical acronym to 99% of their market so other than the recognition they've created in calling it that there's no reason for this issue. They would have been much, much better off calling their GPTs and GPT-related products something (anything) that's actually unique and easily trademarked.
[0] - https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/search/likelihood-confusion
The first occurrence of that particular term I can find on Google Scholar is in 2019 ("Documentation is all you need" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Generative+pre-train...)
Edit: it looks like it was OpenAI. (Radford et al, 2018).
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...
Google Trends shows it first got searched for in measurable quantity back in 2008.
Geoffrey Hinton wrote it. I wonder if he'll have anything to say about OpenAI trademarking the term 11 years after he wrote this. Here's an earlier publication from January, 2012 talking about Hinton's 2011 "Generative pretraining" work: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/three-c...
But they're not applying to trademark "generative pretraining". They're only applying to trademark GPT, which seems (I have very limited knowledge if there are other competing uses of the term) reasonable given that most people associate "GPT" with specific AI implementations created by OpenAI.
There were other "business machine" companies that existed 100 years ago, but that is very different from trademarking "IBM".
The paper "Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-Training" appears to have been released on June 11, 2018. [2]
1: It looks like I can't link directly to it, but it should be pretty easy to find by searching for "GPT" at the parent's link
I'm not sure if the industry is similar enough that this will be a problem for OpenAI (I suspect the fact that people are using GPT to refer to generative pre-trained transformer's in general is more of an issue for this application).
GPT partition tables also come to mind.
Geppetto carved a puppet of wood, And brought it to life as best he could. Geppetto's dreams, so long ago, Still echo in our quest to know, Can we create a being so smart, That it rivals the workings of the heart?
And if someone manages to trademark "transformers" (which IMHO is totally unlikely to succeed for multiple reasons), well then we'd shrug and call them something else, that wouldn't prohibit anyone from making or using transformer models.
e.g.,
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/category/transformers/11
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=76051283&caseType=SERIAL_...
Maybe they will create ChatGPT-powered Autobot and Decepticon toys?
If I ever invent a specific ML design I’m going to call it “computer”. Because that’s as terrible of a name as “transformer”.
As has "Transformer": https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmtext/page/Results
Or, y'know, "Apple", "Orange", "Blackberry", "Windows", etc.
Literally every ML model is a transformer. Every single one of them. All of them are transformers. Using the word “transformer” to refer to a specific architecture is therefore absurd.
This is very different than naming a computer company Apple or Blackberry.
Trademarks are just like this, always have been, probably always will be.
I think Transformer is a stupid name. I think the researchers who chose the name Transformer are big poopyheads for picking a bad name. I’d rather they have named it after themselves, an anagram of their names, or whatever. I wish everyone would stop using the name Transformer. I hope it does get trademarked for the sole purpose of reducing its usage. Ideally to zero.
I hate analogies. I think it would be similar stupid if Epic Games renamed “Unreal Engine” to “Game Engine” or if Toyota renamed the Camry to “Car”.
It’s extremely different from Apple.
It’s vaguely similar to Windows. Except when I write the words “window” in code no one will confuse it for the Operating System. Meanwhile I have written quite a lot of ML code and have regularly used the terms “transform” and “transformer”. None of which have had anything to do with the “Transformer” architecture.