OpenAI Loses EU Trademark Fight — Court Rules the Name Is 'Descriptive

The EU General Court rejected OpenAI's bid to trademark its name, ruling 'OPENAI' is purely descriptive and lacks distinctiveness for software and cloud services.

The EU General Court in Luxembourg has rejected OpenAI's application to register "OPENAI" as a trademark across the European Union, upholding an earlier decision by the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).

The court ruled that for software and cloud computing services, the term is purely descriptive — "open" meaning freely accessible, combined with "AI" for artificial intelligence — and therefore lacks the distinctiveness required for trademark protection under EU law.

OpenAI had argued that the word "open" carries multiple possible meanings and that "OPENAI" is a coined term without a fixed meaning. The company pointed to trademark registrations it had secured in more than 30 countries, including the United Kingdom and Singapore, as evidence the name deserved protection.

The court was unpersuaded. It found the word combination was not unusual in English and ruled that registrations in other jurisdictions are not binding under EU trademark law.

The ruling can still be appealed to the European Court of Justice, the EU's highest court. For now, the decision means OpenAI cannot claim exclusive use of its own name on software and cloud services throughout the 27-nation bloc — a rare rebuke for a company whose brand has become synonymous with the AI boom.

Sources: dpa international, EU General Court