No trademark
for
OPENAI.
No trademark
for
OPENAI.
of
Why is even one of several possible meanings enough to reject a trademark as descriptive? Does it matter that the trademark OPENAI has long been registered in more than 30 other countries?
OpenAI as a trademark in the EU
On June 15, 2023, OpenAI, Inc. filed an application with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) to register the word mark OPENAI. Following a limitation made during the proceedings, the application covered goods and services in several classes, including computer software, cloud services, data processing systems, services related to digital collectibles and cryptocurrencies, and identity verification services.
The examiner partially rejected the application on December 5, 2024. In his view, the mark merely described the goods and services claimed and, furthermore, lacked the required distinctiveness.
OpenAI filed an appeal against this decision on January 27, 2025. The Fifth Board of Appeal of the EUIPO dismissed the appeal in a decision dated June 10, 2025.
OpenAI subsequently filed a complaint with the General Court of the European Union, seeking to have the Board of Appeal’s decision overturned.
OpenAI Loses Case Before the General Court as Well
The court dismissed the lawsuit in its entirety, with Judgment of July 15, 2026 – Case No. T-555/25 … and thereby confirmed the rejection of the trademark application. The examination was based on three objections raised by OpenAI.
Regarding the first ground of objection—the descriptive nature of the mark—the court stated that the relevant public, namely the general and specialized English-speaking public in the Union, would readily recognize the elements “open” and “AI.” The public would understand the term “open” to mean, among other things, “freely accessible” or “unrestricted,” and the term “AI” as a common abbreviation for artificial intelligence. In connection with the claimed IT-related goods and services, this would result in an immediate factual statement indicating that the products in question are based on freely accessible or unrestricted artificial intelligence. For the term to be considered descriptive, even one of several possible meanings would suffice, even if the term “open” could also have other meanings. This would not constitute a neologism worthy of protection because the combination would follow English grammatical structure—adjective before noun—and would not create an impression that went beyond the mere sum of its individual parts. Even the absence of a hyphen or space would not change this.
The court also considered the extension of the rejection to all claimed goods and services in the three classes in question to be justified. The Board of Appeal had correctly assumed that all the goods and services in question—ranging from software applications to cloud services to identity verification services—shared the common characteristic of being based on or capable of being powered by freely accessible artificial intelligence. This would apply even to items that might seem unrelated at first glance, such as software for digital collectibles, smart jewelry, or identity verification services. A uniform rationale for the entire group of goods would therefore have been permissible because a sufficiently homogeneous category would have existed. It would not have been necessary for the descriptive content of the trademark to correspond to the primary purpose of each individual product. It would have been sufficient for a possible use of the respective product to be covered by the descriptive statement. Nor did the trademark’s reputation in the relevant market alter this conclusion, as this factor would be relevant only in the context of establishing market recognition through use, but not in the assessment of the descriptive character as such.
Regarding the second ground of appeal—the lack of distinctiveness—the court clarified that this would no longer be relevant. Since a single absolute ground for refusal would be sufficient to justify rejection, and since the descriptive nature of the trademark had been established, the question of distinctiveness no longer needed to be examined separately.
Regarding the third ground of appeal—the alleged infringement of the principle of equal treatment and the principle of sound administration—OpenAI cited earlier registrations that it considered comparable, as well as the registration of the trademark in more than 30 other countries, including the United Kingdom and Singapore. The Court noted that the EU trademark system is an autonomous system that must be applied independently of national or third-country registration practices. While the EUIPO would be required to take into account prior decisions on comparable applications and to examine with particular care whether a decision should be reached along the same lines, this principle is subject to the requirement of legality, under which each application must be examined strictly and comprehensively on a case-by-case basis. Since the Board of Appeal had conducted such a case-by-case examination and correctly determined the descriptive character of the mark, OpenAI could not rely on divergent prior decisions, especially since those would in any event originate only from lower-level bodies of the EUIPO and would be binding neither on the Boards of Appeal nor on the General Court itself.
Conclusion
The ruling is consistent with established case law of the EU courts, according to which combinations of common terms—particularly technology-related ones—are considered descriptive when in doubt. What is remarkable here is not so much the outcome as the fact that the name of one of the best-known companies in the technology industry, of all places, has stumbled over precisely this hurdle.
The ruling makes it clear that market recognition and eligibility for trademark protection remain legally distinct issues, which may not always be intuitively understandable from the perspective of trademark applicants.
There is still hope for OpenAI through the alternative application for registration based on acquired rights, which the EUIPO will have to review once the decision becomes final. In this respect, OpenAI still has a chance to obtain trademark protection through this route.
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