Doesn't matter either way who invented it. This is trademark, not patent.
If they wanted a trademark, that needed to appear on copy from day 0. The paper is titled: "Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-Training" and not "Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-Training (TM)"
They ALSO would have needed to use a different generic term to refer to the technique. For example, Velcro always says things like "Velcro-brand hook-and-loop," and ALWAYS uses a generic term to refer to hook-and-loop when talking across brands. It ONLY uses "Velcro(tm)" to talk about their product specifically. OpenAI started using GPT generically.
Publications like this one, if anything, undermine OpenAI's case since they're using the term generically.
The decision is correct. Trademark law is used precisely to prevent this sort of thing: OpenAI can have a generic term or a trademark. The law is set up precisely to prevent a company from building their brand value by retroactively trademarking a generic term once relying on a community to get it established.
To be more blunt: I use "GPT" generically because they encouraged me to do so. That should not contribute brand value to OpenAI GPT-3 or OpenAI GPT-4.
I always had the vague idea that probably Velcro was a trademark, but TIL that there's a company called Velcro too. I always thought Velcro was another DuPont product.
Unlikely. The Velcro trademark has been so far gone for decades that I doubt there is a single person on the planet that knows it's the name of a company and not a generic term for hook and loop fastener.
The next company you'll see in this position is probably Google. I think that verb will outlive Google Search.
More importantly, knowing and caring are two different things.
I know that Velcro/Kleenex/Google are specific brands, but I don't really care - the common usage is so far gone that there's rarely a reason to use hook & loop fastener/tissue paper/internet search instead.
Hell, for some people, "iPad" is a semi-generic term for a tablet. (Though I don't get that one, personally.)
> Hell, for some people, "iPad" is a semi-generic term for a tablet. (Though I don't get that one, personally.)
I remember when the NFL first started using Microsoft Surface tablets during the broadcast, except the commentators would keep referring to them as iPads. By the next week's broadcast, every single commentator had a giant "Microsoft Surface" branded tablet cover in front of them at the desk and overall the logos were plastered everywhere.
> If they wanted a trademark, that needed to appear on copy from day 0. The paper is titled: "Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-Training" and not "Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-Training (TM)"
While the (TM) is useful to alert people to your trademark claim, you are not required to use it to establish your trademark. Simply using a unique mark to identify your goods or services and being the first to do so is enough.
Because they didn't make any effort to treat this like a trade mark until after the term itself become generic to the public. If you want a trademark you need to be careful how you use it and how others use it to ensure it doesn't become a generic term. Once something is a generic term it is almost impossible to get it back. (it has been done: Xerox used to be the generic term people used for make a copy - but most of the effort was their competitors who for obvious reasons didn't want to use their competitors company name as a generic term)
If you want a trademark you need to defend it. That means you know the generic term and use that when required. That means when anyone uses your trademark in a generic way your lawyers are immediately sending letters. Check with a lawyer - there are a lot more details you have to get right.
Yeah, just because OpenAI has gotten away with using open source ideology for regulatory capture in the AI space, but that doesn't mean they can get away with it in the intellectual property space.
Non profit is a business structure not a designation meaning “no business acumen.” Many non profits are actually quite profitable and active businesses, but they have no beneficial owners, pay no dividends, etc, and often have some mission that’s in some way broadly beneficial. This exempts them from certain taxation and other benefits. But it absolutely doesn’t mean everything they do is done altruistically without material consideration and definitely doesn’t mean with no legal claims or recourse for protecting their works or identities.
Most people with the organizational skills to operate a complex enterprise demands a pretty significant compensation package. Even if you found someone to do it for considerably less once they’ve proven effective they would become highly sought after in the labor market and would be poached away leading to churn and turnover in roles that really benefit from stability over time. While it is likely there is someone who doesn’t mind living a life of austerity when capable securing of a much more comfortable lifestyle for them and their family, it can be really hard to find them and require a lot of churn in mishiring the talent and losing skilled talent due to inflicting non market bearing penury on them and their loved ones out of some weird morality not supported by the surrounding culture and society.
To their execs. It’s basically a meme in non-profit world how poorly everyone outside the C-suite gets paid and how the non-profit “mission” is weaponized against workers in salary negotiations.
I have a friend who with their CPA got a job at a non profit and they were worried they would pigeon hole into a specific industry and the concept of non profit worried them about their career. My advice to them was non profit does not mean “not profitable to you.” Depending on the non profit salaries can be greatly outsized and often perks are outstanding. All that excess cash goes somewhere and some non profits enjoy enormous margins and lucrative markets, but the accounting and related rules are specialized.
I'm sure the highly paid charity execs would say so. Trouble is, the charity space often suffers from a broken market feedback mechanism, where the people paying for the product are not the people consuming the product, and this can lead to a business structure that looks like a pure-play marketing machine hooked up to exec pockets with occasional leakage into a small amount of actual charity work.
"But the situation occurs in regular business too! Monopolies, oligopolies, etc happen when the market feedback mechanism breaks!"
Yeah, and we should go after those too. It's really astonishing the lengths to which people go to defend bad behavior.
For instance, the life line company (“help me I’ve fallen and can’t get up”) is (or was) organized as a non profit. They sold devices and services at a decent margin. Their excess revenues went back to employees in wages and perks. Executives and founders especially enjoyed extravagant life styles.
Many do so in order to maintain their integrity and reputation. For example, the name Wikipedia and the Wikipedia logo are registered trademarks.
In the case of fundrising and sponsorship, it assures to sponsors the legitimity of that campaign, because there is no conflict with other organisation or company using the same name.
And, non-profits doesn't mean they don't do things that they profit from, it just means they aren't trying to achieve profits for their owners. Endowments are non-profits, but they most certainly are making investments to achieve profits for the purpose of pushing that money into charitable vehicles.
For the same reason Wikipedia needs a trademark, or any successful open source project. To prevent grifters from hitching a ride off your word and muddying the water / confusing users of your service or product
If they wanted a trademark, that needed to appear on copy from day 0. The paper is titled: "Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-Training" and not "Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-Training (TM)"
They ALSO would have needed to use a different generic term to refer to the technique. For example, Velcro always says things like "Velcro-brand hook-and-loop," and ALWAYS uses a generic term to refer to hook-and-loop when talking across brands. It ONLY uses "Velcro(tm)" to talk about their product specifically. OpenAI started using GPT generically.
Publications like this one, if anything, undermine OpenAI's case since they're using the term generically.
The decision is correct. Trademark law is used precisely to prevent this sort of thing: OpenAI can have a generic term or a trademark. The law is set up precisely to prevent a company from building their brand value by retroactively trademarking a generic term once relying on a community to get it established.
To be more blunt: I use "GPT" generically because they encouraged me to do so. That should not contribute brand value to OpenAI GPT-3 or OpenAI GPT-4.